E-citizen – effective inclusion through e-governance services

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.