Digital Confidence: Tools for Safe Online Participation

Digital technologies are the backbone of modern society, enabling communication, services, governance, and innovation. However, this growing reliance comes with increasing risks:
- Cyber threats such as fraud, phishing, identity theft, and ransomware are more sophisticated and widespread.
- Misinformation and disinformation are undermining public trust, eroding social cohesion, and influencing decision-making.
- AI-enabled harms, from deepfakes to automated scams, amplify risks by making attacks faster, cheaper, and harder to detect.
- Vulnerable populations (children, elderly, minority groups, digitally inexperienced) face disproportionate risks in navigating digital ecosystems

Your challenge is to develop strategies, tools, and frameworks that foster digital trust, enabling people and organisations to navigate online environments confidently and safely. Trust is the foundation for meaningful participation: without it, uptake of digital government, online services, and community engagement will continue to be fragmented.
Some key areas to consider are:
- Detection & protection: How can we better distribute information on and mitigate cyber threats, fraud, and AI-enabled harms in real time?
- Trust & integrity: Are there mechanisms to uphold information authenticity and prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation?
- Inclusion & protection of vulnerable groups: Do solutions exist to safeguard high risk groups and enable inclusive and equitable access e.g., children, elderly, digitally disadvantaged?
- Governance & responsibility: What frameworks can balance accountability between governments, platforms, and individuals?
- Digital literacy & empowerment: How can communities and organisations be equipped with the knowledge and tools to navigate online spaces confidently?

Teams taking up this challenge should aim to produce practical, innovative, and scalable solutions that address one or more of the above questions.

In particular, you are expected to produce
- A practical plan that is implementable whilst addressing accessibility, ethical, privacy or trust concerns
- A way to use at least one Government dataset or finding
- Specific examples or simulations to illustrate the effectiveness and potential impact of your proposed solutions. Ideally, you should demonstrate how your solution can be scaled or adapted to a range of scenarios
- A presentation summarising your solution