An increasing number of European countries is implementing online civic and commercial services to enable easier, cheaper and faster administrative operations for citizens. The future trend is obvious: the demand of such services will increase and so will the implementation by governments and businesses. Even though e-Government and e-Commerce offer many benefits, using such services requires a certain amount of digital skills and know-how, which some people lack.
The objective of My e-Start is to teach those people basic skills that are necessary to use the most common e-Government and e-Commerce services in their countries (e.g. e-banking, tax declaration, use of eID cards). The project team cares about giving learners a positive (first) e-experience and a sense of digital achievement.
The increasing trend of internet usage does not automatically lead to an increase of digital skills. Moreover, the continually expanding access to the internet leads to an even bigger ‘digital gap’. The ‘digital gap’ is “the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard to both their opportunities to access information and communication technologies and to their use of the Internet for a wide variety of activities”. Disadvantaged groups of people are in particular suffering under the growing gap and need help in acquiring relevant skills necessary for using e-services. My e-Start will therefore focus on a target group particularly vulnerable to digital exclusion, namely the elderly, disadvantaged individuals with low education and training levels and people with a migration background.
The main output of the project is the development of an extremely simple online course and a user-friendly e-platform adapted to specific needs of the target group. Both the online course and the e-platform will emphasis on the use of ‘easy language’, simple instructions, clear visual elements and well-structured content to avoid confusion and overstress of the target group. The aim of the online course is to provide people with very basic knowledge about common e-Government and e-Commerce services in their countries and how to use them. To ensure an implementation of the course in different contexts and environments, My e-Start will design and develop a comprehensive manual for adult educators and training providers working with the target group and intending to implement the online course into their curricula.
Project Website: http://my-estart.eu