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

PUBLIC E-SERVICE CENTRES IN EUROPE
1 E-INCLUSION: A SOCIAL NECESSITY, AN ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
Currently 30-40% of the European population, mostly older people, people with disabilities,
lower education groups, unemployed and those living in less-developed regions, are still not
actively engaged in using ICT and are not part of the Knowledge Society in Europe.
E-inclusion aims to prevent the risks of 'digital exclusion', that is to ensure that disadvantaged
people are not left behind, and to avoid new forms of exclusion due to lack of digital literacy or
of Internet access.
Riga targets
The Knowledge Society has the potential to ensure that knowledge resources are more
equally distributed, and to offer new job opportunities by overcoming the traditional barriers to
mobility and geographic distance. The use of ICT is at the heart of a strong Knowledge
Society for all. It contributes to more access to data and information, creates opportunities for
life long learning, opens new networking dimensions and innovates the culture of production
and cooperation.
For these reasons, 34 European countries signed a Ministerial Declaration 1 (Riga, 2006)
committing themselves to ambitious policy targets for an inclusive knowledge society:
- Broadband coverage to reach at least 90% of the EU population by 2010;
- Ensure accessibility of all public web sites by 2010;
- Literacy and competence between disadvantaged groups and the average population
should be halved by 2010; and
- The differences in Internet usage between current average use by the EU population and
use by older people, people with disabilities, women, lower education groups, the
unemployed and people from less-developed regions should be reduced to a half, from
2005 to 2010.
1.1 This report in context; the "e-Inclusion: be part of it!" campaign
Commission services recently adopted the Riga Dashboard report 2 , which reports on the
midway progress towards these 2010 policy targets. A call for e-Inclusion contributions to
start the 2008 campaign ‘e-Inclusion: be part of it!’ was launched to demonstrate good e-
Inclusion practices from around Europe. The results of the call were summarised in a report
that was presented at a ministerial event on e-Inclusion (Lisbon, December 2007) 3 . The
Commission services also stimulated the exchange of e-Inclusion experiences and material
through the portal www.epractice.eu.
The resulting message is that the social and economic relevance of e-Inclusion is increasingly
recognised by public, commercial and non-profit stakeholders, with many actions being
undertaken at all levels. Despite these, progress towards the Riga targets is still at only half
the speed needed to realise them by 2010.
The next step was an in-depth analysis of evidence-based cases. Analysing their impact and
the publishing of these cases will improve the ability of stakeholders in the e-Inclusion field to
identify obstacles, to see how successful initiatives can be started, and to find sustainable
solutions to operate and manage an e-inclusion project in an efficient and accessible manner.
In addition a call for e-inclusion awards 4 (from May to September 2008), launched in
preparation for the ministerial conference on e-Inclusion (Vienna, December 2008) is
providing many interesting insights regarding the impact assessment of each initiative
submitted.
The findings in this report are based on eight interviews 5 with representatives of Public E-
1
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/ict_riga_2006/doc/declaration_riga.pdf
2
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/docs/i2010_initiative/rigadashboard.doc
3
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/bepartofit/index_en.htm
4
http://www.e-inclusionawards.eu/
5
The seven first cases were selected out of the contributions in the ‘e-Inclusion: be part of it!’ campaign (see
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/docs/bepartofit/contributions_booklet.pdf for details), cases
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