New publication highlights the role of eInclusion actors on improved digital literacy in the European Union
eInclusion – access to ICTs, ICT skill development, and digital literacy – is becoming increasingly important in both developed and developing contexts for social and economic participation. Strategies for shared access (telecenters, libraries, cybercafes, etc.) by eInclusion actors are particularly important for including marginalized populations. Successful investment to support eInclusion actors requires an understanding how venues operate.
Commissioned by the European Union’s Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), Telecentre-Europe and the Technology & Social Change Group conducted an online survey aiming to provide a ‘map’ of telecentres, libraries, and other eInclusion actors operating in the European Union (EU). The report presenting the findings of this survey, the first of its kind in Europe to collect data from eInclusion actors, is now available.
Written by Gabriel Rissola of Telecentre-Europe and TASCHA’s Maria Garrido, this report presents the results of an online survey of almost 3,000 organizations working on eInclusion in 27 European countries. The findings of the analysis provide policy relevant insights and help shed light on the size of the sector, the types of organizations providing eInclusion services and their capacity (staff, budgets, funding sources, and networks), the services they provide, and the target groups they serve. They illustrate the key relevance of these estimated 250,000 actors in EU27 in advancing social and economic inclusion goals of the Europe 2020 strategy, and in particular, the digital literacy and inclusion goals of the Digital Agenda for Europe.
This research constitutes a building block of a larger project ‘Measuring the Impact of eInclusion Actors on Digital Literacy, Skills, and Inclusion goals of the Digital Agenda for Europe’ (MIREIA), a policy-oriented research project which aims to better understand the role of these actors across the European Union and to create adequate measurement instruments to provide evidence about how they contribute to the achievement of the Europe 2020 policy goals, from the eInclusion perspective.
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