Good practice Imported

Get online Reading

United Kingdom · Reading · Local · See the United Kingdom profile · See the Reading profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 97% 32/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Get Online Reading aims to use Reading’s highly literate population to help those who don’t have the skills or opportunity to make use of the internet. They run drop-in sessions in several of Reading’s central libraries and other community venues all over the town. Volunteers he

Details

Maturity: Established
Promoter: Get online Reading — website
Type: Policy
Status: Ongoing
Target groups: People with disabilities, Elderly people, Unemployed and those facing social problems
Period: 2015-05-04
Keywords: skills, internet, online

Context

Reading is the headquarters of several large hi-tech companies such as Microsoft and Symantec, but in some areas of the town the proportion of the population without internet access is still much worse than the UK average.

Objectives

To use Reading's highly literate population to help those who lack the skills or opportunity to make use of the internet.

Activities

Get Online Reading runs drop-in sessions at several of Reading's central libraries and other community venues across the town. Volunteers help attendees learn to use the internet, email, and a new smartphone, tablet or computer.

Implementation

Indicative cost: Low (< €50k)
Time to results: Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills: Volunteers delivering one-to-one drop-in digital-skills support, Reading Voluntary Action and Reading Borough Council named as stakeholders

Conditions for success

Use of existing library and community venues across the town to maximise reach
Volunteer-delivered, informal drop-in format lowering the barrier to participation

Where it fits

Governance type: voluntary-sector/local-authority partnership
Scale: local

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

MEDICI / Digital Inclusion Atlas — accessed 2026-06-14
Practice website — accessed 2026-06-14

Attachments

Source image

Quality score: 32/100

How is this calculated?

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported

Top 97% in this catalogue (1041 scored practices)

Scores cluster high, so position within the catalogue is often more telling than the number alone.

Evaluation

Evaluated by MEDICI consortium

Score profile — the dimensions behind the score — how it's computed

Innovation level3/5

How novel the approach is, from the source innovation rating (graded 0–5).

Sustainability (ongoing)1/1

Whether the initiative is still ongoing rather than ended.

Evaluation evidence0/1

Whether a substantive evaluation of the initiative exists.

Demonstrated reach0/1

Whether the initiative reached a measurable number of people.

Documented learning0/1

Whether transferable lessons learned are documented.

Cite this

Evidoria. Get online Reading. Persistent ID: 4e89ca97-a4de-441e-8e5e-65953e03eddf.

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