11 Mar Digital inclusion: the voluntary sector has a critical political role to play
If there’s one challenge that voluntary organisations need to rise to, it’s this. For a long time, voluntary organisations have focused on their “core” mission, defending the rights they have co-constructed with their members: the right to vote, the right to form associations, the right to abortion, the right to social security, the right to housing, the right to gender identity, the right to education and the right to culture. In their eyes, the screens of these audiences were no more than tools. The forced digitisation being driven by public and economic authorities and the pandemic now make them an obligatory point of entry to these essential rights. It would be a major mistake for the sector to approach this from a purely technical standpoint.
The digital divide: once a buzzword, the concept is no longer popular. Today we prefer to talk about digital inclusion, reducing digital inequalities, digital appropriation and digital mediation. When we put a document on the table on this subject, we call it “action plan for digital mediation for all Walloons” or “Walloon digital inclusion plan” or even in Brussels “digital appropriation plan”.
PMTIC & EPN
Historically, digital inclusion policies originated in Wallonia in the early 2000s with the launch of the ICT Mobilisation Plan by the then Minister for Employment and Training. That same year, the same Marie Arena financed the publication by Philippe Allard and Pierre Lelong of the book “Les espaces publics numériques, moteur d’un internet participatif”. The first initiative was aimed at improving the digital skills of jobseekers. The second aims to facilitate “the setting up of not-for-profit spaces open to the public with a project for individual and/or group support to promote access, initiation and appropriation of the Internet, multimedia and office automation. The “genesis” of the first scheme will be entrusted to the Laboratoire de soutien aux Synergies Education Technologie at the University of Liège, which will be responsible for the programme, methodology and content development. Its funding will be structural, set by decree, a new version of which is expected next year. The EPN system will be supported on an ad hoc basis through calls for tender and equipment grants, one of the largest of which is the €15,000 envelope allocated at the end of last year to each of the 166 approved structures. It will be run by the Technofutur TIC digital skills centre under an annual agreement worth €150,000. As a sign of the times, the said Centre is now taking over the running of the network of PMTIC operators, in coordination with the Laboratoire de soutien aux Synergies Education Technologie at the University of Liège, which continues to be the driving force behind the scheme.
2,400 beneficiaries and 97,000 hours of training
The PMTIC is a training scheme. Each recognised operator (in 2019, 54 approved operators, including 17 EPNs, trained 2,400 beneficiaries, corresponding to 97,000 hours of training) is responsible for providing training to jobseekers at a cost of €7.50 per hour per trainee, within an overall framework of 48 hours divided into 4 training units: first contacts with the digital world; email and social networks; browsing and searching for information; office automation. The initiative will mainly be of interest to the voluntary sector, in particular what are now known as CISPs (Centres d’Insertion Socio-Professionnelle), which already offer training to jobseekers. The large number of people they initially attracted became increasingly rare over the years. At the same time, administrative and certification requirements will increase, and the funding of the scheme will be repeatedly questioned by politicians. All this will weaken the network and reduce the number of operators. In 2018, the support grant to LabSET for supervising the network came to an end. Thanks to the willingness of the Liège lab, the scheme continued to operate on its own funds in slow mode. Today, a 2-year agreement links LabSET to the Technofutur ICT Skills Centre, one for educational coordination, the other for facilitation, technical training and communication, while a new decree is in the pipeline for an expanded, modernised and refinanced version of PMTIC. Clearly, the issues of skills acquisition, digital mediation and digital inclusion are becoming increasingly important and sensitive.
Digital mediation: 500 Walloon players
It was against this backdrop that, in mid-April 2019, Pierre Lelong and Eric Blanchart, respectively Project Manager and Project Manager for the Wallonia EPN Resource Centre, co-signed the Memorandum entitled “Pour une politique de la médiation numérique en Wallonie – Insérer les citoyens dans une société inclusive et innovante”. This document places great emphasis on decompartmentalisation. The authors estimate that there are 500 players directly or indirectly involved in digital mediation. The spectrum is wide: from public reading to cultural centres and museums, not forgetting CPAS and PCS, community technology centres, front-line associations working with vulnerable groups, continuing education associations, third places, CoderDojos and, of course, EPNs and PMTIC operators. They advocate the emergence of a regional ecosystem thanks to a cross-disciplinary, unifying project: “Stakeholders, players in the field, decision-makers and final beneficiaries have everything to gain from a coordinated, broad, visible and coherent system of all the initiatives working around digital mediation. The authors call for the establishment of a structured network of third places offering a coordinated range of digital services to the public.
Digital relay agent
EPNs have their place: in September last year, proposals for “an action plan for digital mediation for all Walloons” were submitted by the SPW Economy, Employment and Research and the Digital Agency, in collaboration with all the players involved in inclusion. The proposed actions include strengthening the system and introducing a common minimum skills base for vulnerable groups. Eric Blanchart: “Whether they go to Saint-Nicolas, Comines-Warneton or Virton, to a library, as part of a Social Cohesion Plan (PCS) or to a local EPN, citizens will thus be guaranteed to find the same content linked to the basic digital skills described in the European DigComp reference framework”. The authors of the action plan base the restructuring and strengthening of the system on a multi-level model. The structures closest to the citizens, communes and CPAS, would be invited to appoint a “digital relay agent” as the first point of contact for those who have lost touch with the digital world. It would then be up to them to link up with a local EPN, the number of which is set to increase via a new call for proposals.
Structural funding for Walloon EPNs
Existing EPNs would be allocated an annual structural subsidy, including a co-financing obligation for the promoter (typically 50%). Indicative amount of this subsidy? 25,000 euros. Alongside this (re)funding, there remains the thorny question of the job and status of the multimedia animator. Eric Blanchart: “The path we had mapped out to raise the awareness of the Conseil Régional de la Formation and other training bodies has failed. The political will wasn’t strong enough, we didn’t have enough influence to be able to see it through, even if we did manage, with Forem, to produce a reference framework on the job of multimedia animator. But now there’s the European Start Digital project, supported in Wallonia by Forem, SPW, AdN, the CISP interfederation, Ifapme and interMire, the association providing support and assistance to the eleven Regional Employment Missions, one of whose missions is to develop and train digital mediators and facilitators and to recognise a range of skills. The issue has therefore been relaunched: it could lead to recognition and enhancement of the profession, if not of facilitator then at least of digital mediator, in which EPN facilitators could find themselves”.
Brussels Digital Accessibility Players' Collective
In Brussels, the emergence and networking of digital inclusion players, first and foremost the EPNs, is the result of players in the field and, more specifically, in 2008, the desire of 4 associations to make the work of the EPNs more visible: l’Atelier du Web, Fobagra, FIJ & Banlieues. The Collectif des Acteurs Bruxellois de l’Accessibilité Numérique / Digitale Inclusie Brusselse Actoren Collectief will become a not-for-profit organisation in the summer of 2019. Caban’s aim? “To promote the inclusion of all citizens in a fair, equitable and sustainable digital society. To achieve this, the association’s mission is to bring together the associations and other bodies fighting against the digital divide in Brussels. At the centre of this effort are the EPNs, of which there are currently some 20 approved structures”.
Proposals for structural support for Brussels EPNs
In its 2021-2024 digital appropriation plan, the Brussels Region places these structures at the forefront. The aim is both to provide high-quality support for the EPNs in Brussels and to standardise the services they offer. Above all, their resources need to be strengthened. With this in mind, the digital inclusion coordination committee led by the CIRB, which is responsible for developing and implementing the digital appropriation plan in Brussels, has sent Clerfayt proposals for the structural funding of the EPNs, based on a human and financial inventory drawn up by CABAN. In the meantime, these structures, which are largely run by multimedia facilitators whose jobs are often insecure, have benefited for the past ten years from a closed budget of €100,000 used by the CIRB to ‘rematerialise’, year in, year out, 4 EPNs a year. With the health crisis and the rise of digital technology (and therefore digital inequalities), the region has freed up additional resources. Last year, an exceptional budget of €480,000 was voted as part of the special measures for digital inclusion. The breakdown was as follows: €30,000 in exceptional support for approved EPNs (10 EPNs received €3,000), €50,000 was allocated for CABAN’s missions and €400,000 was entrusted to the King Baudouin Foundation for the “Digital Brussels” call for projects.
30 projects
The 30 winning projects (24 French-speaking and 6 Dutch-speaking) were selected by a panel of independent experts. They are currently being rolled out. The target audiences of the selected projects correspond logically to those addressed by the EPNs: young people, job seekers, people with disabilities, sick children taking distance learning courses, senior citizens, occupants of social housing, women from immigrant backgrounds. Some projects organise mobile social teams, others seek out people in difficulty to offer them support in the Espaces Publics Numériques (EPNs), and still others create ‘buddies’ and peer helpers… The Etterbeek EPN uses these resources to provide support for teenagers (schooling, job hunting, administration). The Saint-Gilles EPN offers a mobile EPN formula, while the Evere Cultural Centre and the Jette CPAS call on a public computer specialist to visit the homes of people with digital difficulties. Awareness-raising workshops have been set up by the Foyer des jeunes des Marolles for young people and mothers. In the same district, Habitat et Rénovation Ixelles is offering a local EPN to provide “tailored” support to residents of social housing in the Marolles district. The ASBL OIRD offers training to children and families living on the margins of society in the Canal area of Molenbeek. The Centre Féminin d’Education Permanente de Saint-Josse-Ten-Noode offers migrant women tailor-made training courses. At Entraide Bruxelles in Laeken, newcomers (with little or no knowledge of French) learn how to consult online service sites. In Etterbeek, a project aims to make touch-screen terminals available to the homeless to enable them to access help and information websites more easily.
800,000 for digital inclusion in Brussels
In February this year, the 2021-2024 appropriation plan was approved. It provides for an annual budget of €900,000, of which €100,000 is allocated to Easy Brussels for administrative simplification and €800,000 to the CIRB for the remainder of the operationalisation of the plan, which is steered by the digital inclusion unit through a working group bringing together, around the Centre d’Informatique pour la Région Bruxelloise, public players (Bruxelles Formation, Actiris, perspective. brussels, Women in Tech, Bruxelles Social, the SPFB), local players (CABAN, Passwerk, WeTechCare) and private players (BNP Paribas Fortis).
Tania Maamary, digital inclusion coordinator at CIRB: “From this budget, we are going to allocate €200,000 this year to (re)materialise the approved EPNs”. That’s around €10,000 per structure.
A special place for the King Baudouin Foundation
It has to be said that the KBF occupies a special place and plays a special role on the map of digital inclusion in Belgium. The fight against poverty is part of its 2020-2024 business plan. In its roadmap, it includes the digital aspect of precariousness, which reinforces the isolation and fragility of people who are already on the margins of society. Its objective? To promote digital inclusion by stepping up support for the acquisition of basic digital skills for the most vulnerable sections of the population”. To underpin its strategy, the FRB has funded dedicated research on the subject and published the first digital inclusion barometer in August 2020. Today, any document or proposal relating to digital appropriation and inclusion policies in Belgium must refer to it. It will also be sponsoring the launch of the social start-up WeTechCare Belgium, a subsidiary identical in spirit and mission to its French “parent company”, WeTechCare.
A benchmark barometer
Quentin Mertens, senior FRB project coordinator: “Digital technology is not neutral in that it increasingly conditions access to essential services such as health, housing and administration. Two years ago, we zoomed in on existing figures, mainly from Statbel, to quantify the phenomenon. But there was no dedicated research on the subject. With the 2020 Digital Inclusion Barometer, that has now been done. This in-depth research work confirms the scale of a problem that, in our view, remains underestimated. To say that 40% of the Belgian population is in a situation of digital vulnerability is to say that the day-to-day lives of these people are likely to be impacted, or even degraded, because of a lack of access to digital technology (8%) or a very low level of skills in this area (32%). “Four out of ten Belgians are at risk of digital exclusion and, unsurprisingly, digital inequalities reinforce social inequalities. For the head of the FRB, EPNs are good, but not enough. In 2019, the EPNs in Wallonia reached 60,000 people. Impressive”, explains Quentin Mertens, “but not enough in view of the one million people in Wallonia who are experiencing digital difficulties. In his view, the solution lies with the social players. They are directly on the ground. They are the ones who receive requests from people who don’t have a computer or email, who can’t get by. So either the social professionals consider that it’s not their job, or, on the strength of the bond of trust they have with their clients, they decide to give them a helping hand and then direct them to professional digital mediation structures such as the Espaces Publics Numériques. The 123 Digit platform was set up by WeTechCare Belgium to equip and support these frontline players.
Emmaus galaxy
In France, Emmaüs Connect launched the social startup WeTechCare in 2016, with the mission of bringing a learning platform – Les Bons Clics – online, with the aim of reaching one million people by 2020. The FRB’s plans for a spin-off involve setting up a mirror Belgian association in 2019: WeTechCare Belgique, which has adapted Les Bons Clics to the Belgian context at the initiative of the Foundation. 123 Digit’s ambition is identical: “to support social players in helping their members of the public who are having difficulty with digital technology, so that they can become autonomous when they go online”.
On the board of WeTechCare Belgium
The young association is founded by active members of WeTechCare France and the Google Boys: Jean Deydier, founder of the Emmaüs Connect association and WeTechCare France, is responsible for the day-to-day management of WTC Belgium. Other directors include Christian Magon de la Villehuchet, vice-chairman of WTC France and head of the Havas group in Belgium. Alexandre Aymé, co-founder of digital strategy consultancy Adveris, is a director of WeTechCare France, while Franck Pierre Alfero, chairman of WeTechCare Belgium, is a Customer Value Advisor at Google France. The Treasurer of WTC Belgium is none other than Christophe Querton, a former Google employee who is now Chairman of the 4Wings family foundation and, incidentally, co-founder and director of Accelery, another Brussels-based digital strategy consultancy.
Donations, European projects and public/private partnerships
The Belgian association and its 123digit platform are funded on a number of levels. Firstly, donations, thanks to the support of the FRB, the ING Fund for a Digital Society (€5,500, renewable for two years) and the 4Wings Foundation (contribution to the association’s budget over a 3-year period). Then there are the European projects, with Interreg funding in the pipeline for the training of 1,000 digital carers. (€1 million over two years for the entire project and its partners). Finally, there are private partnerships, the first two partners being Febelfin and Itsme, who have financed the development of training modules for their services. For Quentin Martens, the door is open to other partners: “There is still great potential for developing the I23 Digit platform. WeTechCare is listening to other players, whether they be mutual insurance companies, public authorities or other private players, to finance modules based on their own services”. As, at national level, the e-box…
Thinking outside the box
The reality is there. At the end of December 2020, the Special Consultative Commission on Consumer Affairs made a brief assessment of the extent and consequences of the digitisation of the economy. Digital inequality,” explains its authors, “can lead to social and economic exclusion for people who have difficulty using or who do not have access to these technologies. “In the gas, electricity and electronic communications sectors, bills and consumption notifications are increasingly obtained via electronic customer areas such as MyLampiris and MyProximus. Reimbursement of medical expenses is following the same trend (e.g. MySimbio, MyDKV). Bpost is also using electronic tools to track postal items. As for administrative services, the strategy for modernising them also involves digital technology (e.g. the eHeath healthcare platform, online tax returns (MyMinFin), applications for grants, school enrolments, applications for housing assistance, applications for bonuses, etc.). Job vacancies are increasingly being advertised digitally. Jobseekers who are not in a position to exploit ICTs because they do not have access to the equipment or training to use them are out of the game in advance”.
Popular education must play its part
But it would be a mistake for voluntary organisations to allow themselves to be reduced, via cleverly distilled calls for projects, to simply helping people to equip themselves with and use digital equipment. It is crucial, in terms of the target audiences for voluntary action, to provide the keys, to open the bonnet, to shed light on what is at stake. The proprietary tools and platforms to which we entrust more and more behavioural data represent a loss of autonomy for individuals and life in society. The opacity of the way recommendation algorithms work (for purchases, cultural consumption, leisure activities) and the looping systems that drain the information to which each person is supposed to adhere, call into question the democratic functioning of our society. This is where popular education must play its part.
Putting digital technology at the service of emancipation
Périne Brotcorne, researcher at CIRTES, assistant at FOPES and co-editor of the 2020 digital inclusion barometer: “Many continuing education associations are working on access to equipment and on the technical and cognitive mastery of digital tools, but this is not enough. In a way, in a context of increasing digitalisation, this means working on a form of controlled integration, on laborious participation in the digital society. What we need to do here is foster a critical vision of uses and work towards full social appropriation of digital technologies. We need to go beyond the stage of adoption and learning, and succeed in putting digital technology at the service of the autonomy and emancipation of individuals and communities. The aim of lifelong learning must be to derive social benefits from the use of digital technologies”. Social and cultural players must take hold of technology as a political object and question it in this sense. They must reject the label of digital helpers. Their mission is to put digital cultural mediation into action, while at the same time demanding that human contact points be maintained as interactive guarantors of access to essential rights for all populations.
Jean-Luc Manise
© Catherine BERNIER, SPW – Article created during the World café workshop on digital inclusion on 26/04/2019
Published in https://gsara.tv/fracturenumerique/inclusion-numerique/
No Comments