E-citizen – effective inclusion through e-governance services Erasmus Project

Project Title

E-citizen – effective inclusion through e-governance services

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project concerned the exchange of practices in the field of effective citizens inclusion into the process of designing and developing e-services by the local and regional administration. In the digital times of today, there are more and more opportunities for citizens to become involved in such processes. Nowdays the local and regional authorities are increasingly facilitating the citizens’ cooperation with various types of applications and virtual platforms. They care about the fact that public institutions have ceased to be perceived as hostile institutions for residents, hindering their daily life and dealing with administrative matters. Moreover, often in the context of such e-services they offer opportunities for participation, e.g. in the public consultations or in forms of civic participation. Unfortunately, this offer is still very inaccessible to people with low competences and digital skills. Due to the lack of effective ways in terms of learning using e-government services, some part of the population is even more socially excluded. For this reason, the project handle the issue of social inclusion through using the open and innovative practices related to new technologies. Therefore, the main objective is using the idea of e-government as a tool for more effective social inclusion of EU citizens. The aim is to be more e-governance than e-government. Through the development of good practices in adults teaching effectively, especially for those who have low educational competences, we can change this situation and take advantage of the potential of e-government fully.

In the project over 600 people were involved, including 240 in Turkey, 124 in the Czech Republic, 171 in Poland and 108 in Spain. Participants were people with low digital skills, eg elderly people, residents od rural areas or migrants. In the project, we also established cooperation with non-governmental organizations or specialists in the ICT industry. Very important partners were local and regional administration offices that implement e-services and inform and train residents in this area.

The basic activities were transnational meetings in Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain and Turkey. We exchanged experiences during them, we learned good practices and worked out an e-book recommendation. During field work, each of the partners held meetings on e-services with residents, cooperated with offices, eg by researching the user experience of existing e-services and developing a plan of information activities.

One of most important results of our activities is an effective exchange of experiences between partner organisations and cooperating institutions on how to involve citizens and encourage them to use e-government services. Thanks to these acttvities the E-book titled: “E-GOVERNMENT CLOSER TO THE PEOPLE” was written. The main issues within this publicaton are: what is the idea of e-governance and how the systems of e-government in all project partners’ countries looks like, what are good practice examples for effective adult learning with the use of new technologies in differnect countries and how effective are e-government practices in partner countries and also how to educate effectively low-skilled citizens by using e-government. In order to make the publication more practical, we took much care of the recommendations and references. We exchanged our national experiences putting special interests on the obstacles in using e-government and e-services, needs, barriers, support and key elements of effective usage of e-government. We discovered the big gap in designing effective adult education which can transfer effectively the knowledge of e-government services and acquire skills in using them.

We have already taken steps to create a continuation of the project. We want to develop a specific platform that could be used by the administration and non-profit organizations in creating e-services, especially at the local level with strong involvment of the citizens. We would like also work out specific educational forms for adults that would be the most engaging and effective way to teach using e-services.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 47120 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fundacja Laboratorium Badan i Dzialan Spolecznych “SocLab” & Country: PL

Project Partners

• DILERSUR ANDALUCIA E.A., S.L.
• GLAFKA s.r.o.
• T.C.Duzce Valiligi