Challenges


• An incipient development of impact indicators was promoted by the Spanish Association of Telecentre Networks last year, but this needs to be complemented and aligned with broader EU e-Inclusion indicators. A way to valorise at EU level all the e-Inclusion impact measurements already made in Spain is required.

• Social Innovation is a new trendy concept across the European Commission but its implications are unclear yet. A stronger link with the DAE needs to be defined. Third sector and public local organisations running telecentres have being developing innovation for years, but their innovative character is still ignored by policy makers. Business innovation is not self-standing; it needs a broader cultural environment which favours the irruption of an entrepreneurial class. Telecentres potential to promote innovation locally and facilitate ICT appropriation by micro and small enterprises needs to be activated.

• Changing paradigms: discussing about e-Inclusion (= digital inclusion) is limitative. ICT have the potential to support social inclusion and innovation strategies. Telecentres need to evolve from the vision of Internet as “territory of opportunities” to Internet in support of the “opportunities of each territory”, also changing focus from "digital literacy" to "innovation literacy". Besides, "digital inclusion" needs to evolve into "digital appropriation", which requires providing tools while empowering people and encouraging their active participation. Policy makers should pay more attention to spontaneous, bottom-up processes of eParticipation (like the "Spanish Revolution" or "15M" on the net, which also attracted the interest of non connected citizens) and use people's preferred virtual environments to communicate with them (attracting people to other platforms like those for e-Government is artificial, risk to fail).

• For the initiatives taking care of domiciliary carers, the main challenges identified are their sustainability (since they are normally carried out by social organisations); the integration of their services with professional services and formal institutions; the lack of attention paid to carers in the policy agenda; the weak/no links across initiatives; and carer's lack of access to ICT/digital competences.

• More and better coordination across policy and funding bodies are required to make a progress.

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