Britain must harness the online innovation of Covid crisis and embrace a digital world
The UK has a defining opportunity to create the blueprint for future success and position itself at the forefront of innovation and economic growth.
Over the last 12 months, people across the UK have turned to digital to keep connected with loved ones and hundreds of thousands of businesses have experimented for the first time with remote working, online sales and cloud computing. It’s estimated that in 2020, the use of technology leapt forward five years in as little as five months. There was a 60% increase in internet usage, whilst searches of online shopping grew by 200%.
As the UK government prepares its course for the biggest recovery challenge in recent history, it needs to build on its strong ambition to support digital skills and innovation, powering a digitally-led recovery that creates opportunity across the UK.
The record breaking speed in vaccine development has shown how fast innovation can move. Adopting a pro-innovation approach will help drive recovery for the UK and create and support the jobs of the future.
Focussing on trends accelerated by lockdown such as the adoption of cloud by small businesses or remote working, has the potential to expedite UK growth: on conservative estimates, both elements could increase UK productivity equivalent to £9 billion.
At Google we work hard to connect small businesses to their customers and I see on a daily basis how they really are the backbone of the British economy. It’s crucial that we can work together to help them learn new digital skills and invest in technologies such as cloud. Encouraging greater adoption of digital technology could be one of the most powerful ways of boosting UK productivity.
Although the majority of businesses now have a digital presence, not all of them have the advanced digital skills needed for the next phase of business growth. Supporting small business owners and workers in upskilling should be as important for the Government’s Industrial Strategy as funding cutting-edge research.
At Google, we are providing the opportunity for people in the UK to take an IT Support Professional Certificate, which prepares people for a career in IT. These complement existing work on digital and technology T-levels by offering shorter courses for UK workers.
We’re also working to help a million local businesses remain open throughout the recovery by providing access to free tools and services, offering 100,000 people free digital training, working with Digital Boost to offer 10,000 hours of mentoring and have distributed £25m advertising credits to small businesses, government agencies and NGOs.
From climate change to drug discovery, in the last 12 months we have seen how AI and data have the potential to make a significant contribution to many pressing challenges. The Government has an opportunity to lead in setting clear standards and democratise access to data to accelerate the digitisation of Britain; creating a British Research Cloud in partnership with the technology sector would help achieve this.
Currently, access to sufficient computing power and resources to undertake cutting edge research is limited to a small number of academic researchers and organisations. A British Research Cloud could provide high-end computational resources to researchers and academics, as well as host large-scale government-held and other public datasets in a secure cloud environment. A national consortium supported by Google and others could provide the critical infrastructure and access to data for all British researchers, democratising access across different regions – contributing to the Government’s levelling up agenda and strengthening collaboration between different research hubs across the four nations.
We’re excited to continue investing in our business in the UK. In 2019, we grew our headcount by over 20%, adding almost 800 additional full time employees. We’re also building a new development in King’s Cross, the first wholly owned and designed Google building outside the US, which will have space for over 7,000 people.
The country is at a defining moment to create the blueprint for future success and position the UK at the forefront of innovation, smart regulation and economic growth. At Google, we want to play our part in helping the Government build back better.