Underlining a growing need for ‘digital literacy’

Digital transformation (DT) is the process of adoption and implementation of digital technology by an organisation to create new or modify existing products, services, and operations, by translating business processes into a digital format.1 DT is not an option, it’s an inevitability. Bearing this in mind, it’s in all our interests to be prepared and engaged in the process. The end-point we currently imagine is Artificial Intelligence (AI). This paper starts with the personal journey of Dr Nick Hill FIHEEM, director of Water Quality London, into the digital world, presents data based on a survey of healthcare estates professionals, and concludes with an opinion of where we should go from here.

At secondary school, my elder brother owned something called a 'slide rule' (for the younger readers of HEJ, you might have to Google that). I assumed that in due course I would also be the happy owner of such a device. Not so. In 1972, one of my classmates obtained a kit to build his own Sinclair calculator, at a cost of £56 (equivalent to £945 today). When assembled, it was capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. We were all amazed. Fairly quickly, prices plummeted, and we all acquired calculators. Leaving school, off I went to become an undergraduate biological scientist. However, I recall at that time that the only computer on campus was a mainframe in the Computer Science Department, into which would venture those students that most of us considered weird, clutching punched cards which apparently were fed into this machine. People muttered words like 'Fortran', but all this 'computer' stuff formed no part of my undergraduate degree; we had paper and calculators (albeit with statistical functions).

A year working for a water authority followed, during which time I had no interaction with computers. The next step was a Master's Degree in Analytical Chemistry, still with no computers, but for some reason we went next door to the Royal College of Art, for a presentation on the 'Information Superhighway'. Despite being surrounded by people with brains, this lecture went completely over our heads. We could not imagine the world being described. Rather than being excited or astounded, it was just too 'far out' to comprehend or believe. We couldn't imagine it as having any relevance to our future lives. When we needed to do a literature search, we cycled to multiple libraries, not the internet. I then studied for a PhD in Public Health Engineering — during which time something that looked like a PC, but which was actually a word processor, arrived in our research section, although it was only operated by a secretary. Our 'cut and paste' was literally that; write on paper and edit it by cutting bits out with scissors, stick it to another sheet of paper, and — when finished — present it to the secretary for typing, the output being paper, not digital. However, when I popped out into the world of work again, I shadowed a Sales/Service engineer for a day, before being interviewed for a similar role. When I asked what he didn't like about his job, he said 'the admin', which involved paperwork and dealing with information provided on large sheets of dot-matrix printed computer output. He said he got 18 months behind with his admin at one stage, and when I enquired about what he did about it, he said he 'chucked it all away, and no-one noticed'. The data obviously didn't have much value.