ICT for Societal Challenges - European Commission - Europa

Yet, despite the on-going innovation in many areas of the public services, one of the
biggest challenges is to ensure that innovative solutions are accessible to all. In 2011,
38 million household were not yet online and the lack of digital skills is a serious
concern. The risk of “digital exclusion” affects in particular the disadvantaged societal
groups: elderly; low income; the unemployed; the less educated and the disabled. To
ensure that disadvantaged groups equally benefit from the digital society we have to
increase digital skills on one hand, and the accessibility of technologies on the other.
The Digital Agenda for Europe is responding to these challenges and sets specific
targets and actions to improve the online public services, to preserve the European
cultural heritage and to tackle the digital divide among different groups of the society.
On the first front, the e-Government Action Plan is dedicated to effective online
public services. The objective is to empower users to actively contribute to the
production of eGovernment services or even policy-making. This will influence public
administrations to become more open, transparent and accountable. The Action Plan
also proposes measures so that citizens and businesses can benefit from on-line
services in other EU Member States as easily as they do at home, and increase the
overall usage. Concrete goals include the registration of data with governments only
once, the EU-wide use of national electronic identities (eID), the personalisation of
services to better respond to users’ needs and the promotion of more open, proactive
and transparent administrations.
The eGovernment Action Plan asks Member States
to formally agree on a common list of key crossborder
public services and implement seamless
cross-border e-Government services in the EU
single market. The ultimate goal is to make it easier
for companies to set up and run a business, and for
citizens to study, work, reside and retire anywhere
in the EU. Key to this strategy is the development
of large scale pilot projects (LSP). These bring together public authorities, service
providers and research centres across the EU in the implementation of common
solutions to deliver online public services that are accessible throughout Europe.
To secure preservation and widespread accessibility of the European cultural
heritage, the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) supports the growth and consolidation
of Europeana, Europe’s digital library, archive and museum. The project started in
2008 with 2 million items and it currently holds more than 24 million objects. In
2011 the European Commission adopted a Recommendation on digitisation and
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