Comparative Study of Public e-Service Centres in - ePractice.eu

PUBLIC E-SERVICE CENTRES IN EUROPE
standards, such as ISO etc., as they lack the financial and personnel means to do so.”
Despite this, the monitoring of quality and evaluation of services represent a must for the
further development of any centre.
C. Services & Activities
Below is a list of the objectives set at the start of the project and the products developed to
meet them:
1. To draft a typology of teaching practices in public internet centres in Europe. This is
realized by the project through a multilingual on-line database presenting (best)
practices in selected European countries at http://www.pic-project.eu It houses a
significant number of cases (over 100 networks of PICs/individual PICs) with a lot of
descriptive information but is, after closer examination, not really a community tool.
There are no tools for socializing (no interactivity, no contact details for best practices
etc.) and it looks as if there have been no updates since last year. It is merely a
product of the project rather than a useful tool for interested professionals.
2. To study which are the most innovative centres in terms of quality processes and
evaluation practices that could potentially be transferred to other countries in Europe.
This resulted in European guidelines for PIC staff and should have an impact on the
evaluation methods inside PICs and the recognition of adult education provided in
PICs. The study states that the best method to evaluate the provided services is the
regular questioning of participants´ on their satisfaction with a PICs' activities, and
with the general quality of the course. The most frequently used and, at the same
time, the most efficient methods involve the written anonymous questionnaire.
However methodologies differ between countries. The IMES association from
Hannover prefers the qualitative evaluation. They carry out interviews with the
different target groups (mostly migrants), and also use participant observation.
Through these methods they see what they do and what they need to do. They take
into account participants’ motivation as well. Many migrants prefer informal
discussions to a formal interview. A strong part of IMES' evaluation is to make an
evaluation report that is circulated to the people who work on the project. There is an
Internet platform where participants can read the report and the results of the
evaluation.
3. To identify best e-inclusion orientated practices, especially those that aim to promote
a non-discriminatory access to digital literacy in PICs. The project therefore produced
a multilingual training guide for PIC managers, facilitators and trainers in Europe, to
facilitate non-discriminatory practices in PICs. The guide offers a better view of still
existing discriminatory practices in PICs and contributes to further improve e-inclusion
of excluded groups. Rastrelli adds that “at ARCI we try to design infrastructure and
services for special and specific groups or even individuals. However, there is a lack
of proper material to use in the training courses with specific groups. Most projects
tend to use standard material, sometimes in foreign languages. At the same time the
large numbers of migrants who use our services need more qualified staff. Our
financial resources are limited and as long as we cannot focus on all the needs of the
specific group, the digital divide remains.” In addition to that, to build a nondiscriminatory
environment really open to all is a demanding task. It means investing
time and resources (personnel firstly) not only in assessing the degree of openness to
all the Lifelong learning services offered, but also in changing/revising/updating
info/guidance/learning/training patterns on a continuous way. This has proven to be
much easier in areas where regional authorities are more sensitive to these issues
and support/reward these efforts, as they are time/cost expensive, especially for
NGOs. It must also be taken into account that private profit making PICs limit their
services to the basic typical Internet ones in order to maximize the expenses with
acceptable revenues. Meanwhile the non-profit PICs investigated by the project offer
a complex comprehensive mix of informative/guidance/tutoring/learning-training
services, accompanied by a wide variety of cultural and social face-to-face activities.
Only in this way, can citizens concretely access the opportunities offered by the
Information-Knowledge Society.
4. To disseminate the results of the project in Europe and to promote the use of the
different products elaborated during the project. From the conducted interviews the
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