The ability of job seekers to access ICT and use the Internet as a job search tool is
affected by a combination of factors, not least those linked to income and educational
attainment. Their use of the Internet may also reflect the need to adopt alternative
strategies in very remote rural areas which are isolated from official Jobcentre services — a
need that is less pressing in rural towns or peri-urban areas with strong links to major
population and service centres. However, the Jobcentre Plus agency’s current approach
to delivering ‘official’ information and counselling services in remote rural areas, relying
largely upon regional and national telephone helplines and Internet sites, appears to have
had a limited impact in the Wick and Sutherland labour markets (among the most remote
rural communities in the mainland UK) in terms of use and identifying opportunities
The findings also demonstrate that those with few technical or analytical skills face
being left behind as service providers drive forward the implementation of ICT-based
services. Servaes and Heinderyckx (2002) argue that the developing information society
will require a new literacy, based on the capacity of individuals to access and use
information and ICT applications. The literacy problems faced by many people on the
margins of the labour market are of the more traditional variety, and are likely to
combine with a lack of ICT skills to exclude them from the information society, and
even from accessing basic public services.
Indeed, as the Internet becomes increasingly dominant as a means of disseminating
information, traditional face-to-face interactions may be downgraded, so that the already
disadvantaged will face further expenses and barriers in attempting to access services in
the ‘traditional’ way (Graham, 2002). Robinson (2001) has noted the over-reliance of
successive British governments on new technologies as a potential cure-all for the
problems of rural communities, and the similarly familiar enthusiasm of the current UK
administration for devolving responsibility for delivering services in disadvantaged areas
to local partnerships (for an EU-wide perspective, see also Geddes, 2000). Behind the
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