Putting+users+at+the+heart+of+the+Digital+Agenda+for+Europe

=Putting users at the heart of the Digital Agenda for Europe=
 * Author(s)** David Newman

In September 2010 I entered my "big idea for the Digital Agenda" on a website. The people with the 150 best ideas were invited to Brussels. On 25th October 2010, I went to the Stakeholder Day on the Digital Agenda. There I met up with half a dozen people with similar ideas on e-inclusion, from organisations that worked with consumers, young people, telecentres and so on. The one thing we had in common was a passionate commitment to people, the users of the Internet and mobiles who are learning how to integrate the technologies into their working and social lives. So we came up with the idea of putting users at the heart of the digital agenda.

It took 50 years for engineers and businesses to learn how to use electric motors in their factories. So we need more than a few computer literacy training courses to ensure that every family, community group, business or government agency has appropriated digital technologies into their practices. We need to bring people through the 4 stages: Note the dynamic, ongoing nature of the path each user takes in appropriating digital technologies into their lives. For example, an older person might first learn to use e-mail or Skype to communicate with grandchildren who have moved overseas. But having met that need, there are other needs that could be met through technology, such as coordinating a protest campaign over post office closures. In the diagram above, users follow a spiral path, identifying needs, meeting their needs, and evaluating the technologies they used (are they good enough, or should they give up?), before identifying another need.
 * 1) **Accessibility.** If people cannot even access the digital world, then all else fails. There are parts of Europe where access to broadband or even mobile data, is scarce. And only 5% of websites in Europe are fully accessible to the visually impaired (all of us when we get old).
 * 2) **Skills and competences.** Just learning how to use a web browser or send an e-mail is only a first step. As people continue to identify new things they want to do using digital tools, there are new skills they have to learn.
 * 3) **Effective use.** As community informatics researchers will tell you, it is [|not enough to have the skills to use a technology]. We all need to find ways to work and live that enable each of us to benefit from the technology. This often means changing our working practices, or even our organisations.
 * 4) **Empowerment.** Once people have mastered digital technologies, they can go on to do things that they couldn't do before, leading to personal and social empowerment in the new digital society.

Policy-makers need to respond to this spiral. They need to repeatedly:
 * 1) **Identify user needs.** This needs to be done in enough detail that organisations can design programmes to meet these needs. Often the statistics collected by EU and national agencies do not enable us to understand current user needs in enough depth. For that we need their detailed stories, collected by groups working with users (or on story collection web sites like Patient Opinion).
 * 2) **Satisfy user needs.** We need to design policies that help rather than hinder people in meeting their needs through digital technologies, starting from the perspective of the users (not the producers or regulators). We also need to support programmes that help users (individually or in organisations) meet these needs.
 * 3) **Evaluate how well user needs have been met in the Digital Agenda.** Too often evaluation is done from the perspective of providers or funders (e.g. counting how many people take training courses, or %ages of the population who have bought something on-line). Instead it should be based on the needs and goals of the users, seeing how well these have been met.

Policy-makers need to repeat this cycle frequently. At least every year, at the Digital Agenda summit, they need to evaluate how well the Digital Agenda activities have helped meet user needs in the past year, and get an updated overview of the currently identified user needs. EU observatories and national governments will have quantitative data on this: but it is civil society groups who will bring to the meeting an in-depth understanding of the diversity of user needs.

If all those interested in this approach can come up with a workable plan by February 2011, this idea will be one of the topics discussed in the first Digital Agenda Summit in June 2011. So I am inviting all readers to add to this page, expanding this basic idea into a set of actions that will put users at the heart of the Digital Agenda for Europe.

Actions
What can we do to start to put users at the centre of the Digital Agenda for Europe? Below suggested actions are grouped under two objectives:
 * 1) Getting user needs and experiences into the Digital Agenda summit in June.
 * 2) Enabling mutual learning between those involved in eInclusion activities.

1. Digital Agenda summit
Each year, under the Digital Agenda for Europe, the European Commission is organising a summit. The first one is in June 2011. At it, an assembly of representatives of the member states and the European Parliament will discuss the issues brought to it by stakeholder groups: mainly those working in the 7 top-down action areas, but also the 7 big ideas generated in October. Out of the summit comes a report to the European Council, which may evaluate progress over the last year, and propose actions to take forward the Digital Agenda. It is a place where EU policies can be revised and updated between now and 2020.

So how can we bring users into the centre of such a meeting? Suggestions include:
 * 1) **Direct participation of users** (probably through video-conferencing).
 * The idea is to get policy-makers to learn from the experiences of people who are at different stages in learning to bring digital technologies into their lives. Too often policy-makers see the numbers, but have no feeling for the passions and frustrations that lie behind those numbers.
 * Can we find groups of people who are willing to tell their stories of: why they started to learn to use the Internet, what barriers they have to overcome, what they have achieved, and how they did it?
 * For this June, we only need a few groups of users from a range of eInclusion projects to speak truth to power.
 * 1) **Produce a users' story collection**
 * The idea is to collect users' stories of their needs, the barriers they faced, and how they met their needs. This story collection can complement both the government statistics, and what the video-conferenced users say.
 * The technology is simple: something like [|Patient Opinion] or the [|Active Citizenship Consultation] would be ideal. But in fact a simple Google form would do, together with links to an existing discussion list for those who want to discuss the stories. Or it could be part of an existing site supporting an eInclusion community of practice (e.g. epractice.eu).
 * The story collection would need to be on-line, and organised or tagged for policy issues before the summit.
 * 1) **A summary statement of user needs and lessons for the summit**
 * written by people in organisations involved in eInclusion,
 * drawing on stories (2).
 * A new one every year, as user needs change.
 * 1) **User-centred sessions at the summit**
 * Since it is possible to include this big idea in the summit agenda, what would work best at getting the participants (especially those who think of themselves as policy-makers) to reflect on user needs and generate recommendations for the next year?
 * We could run electronic brainstorming sessions in which the participants could come up with answers to simple questions that lead in to the big issues:
 * What are the barriers users in different parts of the EU face in taking full advantage of the digital society?
 * What practical steps could the participants and their organisations take to help them?
 * What criteria would you use to evaluate the Digital Agenda from a user-centred perspective.

2. Local partnerships and mutual learning
One thing that has been common in eInclusion work for 20 years has been its fragmented nature. Many projects are set up to do one thing (computer awareness, telework, digital media training, ...), rather than meet all the needs of different users in the local community. Having mastered one skill (e.g. how to e-mail your grandchildren), people then have to confidence to attempt new uses of technology (e.g. co-ordinating a local campaign): but they often have to go elsewhere to get support.

We need ways to support users as they move along their spiral paths from accessibility to full empowerment. Suggestions include:
 * 1) **Technology appropriation centres.**
 * Modelled on the successful appropriate technology centres of the 1980s, they would be places to demonstrate and give advice on whatever needs local users have, covering a range of technologies, needs and users.
 * They would not just be telecentres, training centres, agricultural knowledge centres (or whatever a funder wants), but be free to follow the needs of users in their locality.
 * This would need funding, so it is not something to do before June.
 * 1) **Local meetings.**
 * Bring together people from different organisations and projects to learn from each other.
 * Cover all types of user: [|young people], old people, small businesses, community groups, public sector workers struggling with new technologies, government Ministers and European Commissioners trying to invent eGovernment, ...
 * Make it possible for those struggling to overcome a barrier to learn from the creative solutions of those who have overcome it.
 * This already happens in some places, so the first step is to find good examples of such meetings.

No doubt there are other possibilities. It might not be possible to do anything along these lines before June, but it is worth seeing if these approaches could be turned into ideas to propose at the summit for future funding.

Timetable
This is a rough timetable, taking account of the dates set by the European Commission, namely to have an action plan by 21 February and the Digital Agenda summit in June. Feel free to add actions, or to stick your name in the actors column.
 * ~  ||~ Action ||~ Date ||< Actors ||
 * < 1 ||< Find more people are organisations working with users who are willing to take part. ||< Feb.-Mar. 2011 ||<  ||
 * < 2 ||< Set up (or find) a story-collecting web site for stories of user needs ||< Feb.-Mar. 2011 ||<  ||
 * < 3 ||< Collect stories of user needs, and ways to meet user needs through the organisations and web site. ||< Apr.-May 2011 ||<  ||
 * < 4 ||< Organisations find people or groups willing to take part in the Digital Agenda summit. ||< Apr.-May 2011 ||<  ||
 * < 5 ||< Produce a summary statement on user needs and lessons for the summit, and put it online. ||< May 2011 ||<  ||
 * < 6 ||< Organise ways for users to participate in the Digital Agenda summit (e.g. video-conferencing links, electronic brainstorming sessions involving policy-makers and users, sessions organised like the stakeholder day was). Liaise with organisers appointed by the Commission. ||< May-June 2011 ||<  ||
 * < 7 ||< Run user-centred events during the summit, and try to get participants to generate some ideas on how to meet user needs over the next year, and how to evaluate them. ||< June 2011 ||<  ||
 * < 8 ||< Develop ideas from the summit into a user-centred agenda, and publish it. ||< July-Sept. 2011 ||<  ||
 * < 9 ||< Repeat 1-8 in more detail and depth for the 2012 summit. ||< Oct. 2011-Sept. 2012 ||<  ||

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