Digital Trust

Digital Trust: Young Online & Confident

What is it?

Digital Trust – Young, Online and Confident​ was a digital strategy challenge for South Australian innovators and entrepreneurs set by South Australia’s young people.

And it was a world first. 

Young South Australians identified the biggest problem they face when online, and challenged South Australia’s tech innovators and entrepreneurs to solve the problem by designing a digital solution.

Young people helped guide the design process and helped judge the solutions to determine which idea(s) could be developed further into a prototype.

This departure from the norm of adults deciding what is most important to young people – was about young people becoming active and vocal participants in the processes and solutions that affect them, while simultaneously showing industry how this input from young people can work.

The Challenge problem

The Commissioner involved young people around South Australia by polling them to find out what issues  affect them the most in the online world.

The polling revealed that they are most concerned about knowing who and what they can trust online.

The Commissioner explored this issue in depth with another group of 200 young people, which came down to the need for young people to have a better understanding of when and what to block, ignore, report, and delete when they receive or come across troubling, unsettling or unpleasant things when they are in the online world. 

Just like life offline, most things are not black and white, and young people wanted tools to give them confidence in knowing how to deal with grey areas. 

The Commissioner partnered with Digital Government and AustCyber to deliver the D3 Challenge for 2019, setting this problem to South Australian innovators and entrepreneurs. This was made possible with generous funding from AustCyber whose support for the project enabled a prototype phase to be awarded to the team who were voted to have the best idea for solving the problem posed by young people.

Background

An important part of the Commissioner’s work is to reframe the way people solve problems that affect the lives of young people. This means finding out what it is that young people actually want, rather than making the things adults think young people want.

But this goes further than creating authentic solutions that address the real problems faced by young people. It’s about changing the way industry and government looks at consulting with young people when making policies and introducing products and services that will have a bearing on their lives.

Aims

To practically empower young South Australians to identify a problem that affects them, and beyond this, to stay involved throughout the process to guide the formulation of solutions and to judge which solution(s) provided by adults receive funding to go to prototype stage.

Outcomes

Following two full days in workshops facilitated by LeapSheep, five teams pitched their solutions at the D3 Digital Challenge Pitch and Award’s night held at MOD Future Museum in August 2019.

South Australian digital entrepreneurs Deming Factor won the Launch Pad Award and were awarded $15,000 in grant funding to develop EndoBox – an online space for children aged 7-12 years to explore and experience free, open gameplay with their closest friends and family in a members only online environment.

Deming Factor convinced the judges of the potential their idea offered to grow into a business addressing future sustainability, social value, safety design, and use of cyber security design principles. Most importantly it need to show how it enables young people to make informed choices, feel safe, and navigate and respond to the digital world with confidence.

The panel of esteemed judges included SA Commissioner for Children and Young People, Helen Connolly, CEO of AustCyber, Michelle Price, Chief Information Security Officer for SA Government, David Goodman, Chief Technology Officer at Dtex Systems, Mohan Koo and three young alumni from the South Australian Department of Education’s STEM Ambassadors’ program. The STEM alumni informed the Launch Pad Award and selected the Young People’s Choice Award.

Vanguard took out the Young People’s Choice Award for their ‘helpline’ style service, First Contact – an anonymous, user friendly and trustworthy digital space where young people can obtain free advice on cyber safety related issues, provided by volunteer university students.

To download and read a copy of the media release announcing the outcome of the D3 Challenge click here