The Digital Divide: Opportunities and threats at the verge of EU Enlargement

Terms of Reference for

a Workshop on the Digital Divide

to be held in Brussels on

23 January 2004

Janus is a project funded by the European Community under the “Information Society Technology” Programme (1998-2002)

Introduction

Digital divide – in simple words the gap between the information technology ‘have’ and ‘have-not’ – is a term which allows illustrating the socio-economic environment of the evolution of societies into the Information Society.

The digital divide is a phenomenon that can be geographical, as between nations or regions, but can also take other forms within a specific geographic region. As literacy and digital literacy merge, those with low skills levels, of different national backgrounds (immigrants, refugees, elderly, low income) are at a particular risk of being excluded from the Information Society. Also, given that more and more countries digitalise a broader set of services and the dialogue with citizens under the umbrella of e-government, the digital divide is not just a matter of economic development, but also an issue of wider social participation and development of our democracy. Thinking in dilemmas, on one hand global digital access and digital literacy can contribute to a more globally sustainable economic and broader democratic development. On the other hand they can also have the opposite effect of widening the divide and leading to new forms of economic exploitation and democratic exclusion.

The JANUS workshop will approach the digital divide from a global perspective. Its key note speeches will look at the role of countries in the new global market in decentralised services and present industry case studies. After setting the global frame, the JANUS workshop will concentrate on European research with policy implications for the digital divide in an enlarged Europe.

The first session of the workshop is therefore dedicated to specific aspects of the digital divide between old and new EU member states. With the goal of becoming the world’s most competitive knowledge-based society, the Lisbon strategy seeks ways to foster sustainable economic growth in Europe. Economic theory and empirical observations have shown that investment in ICT and deployments of ICT have a positive impact on economic growth. Conversely, a geographical ‘digital divide’ consequently results in competitive disadvantage and an ‘economical divide’ between countries. Statistics indicate that a geographical digital divide exists within the European Union and also between the average of old and new member countries. To increase the overall competitiveness of an enlarged Europe and to avoid economic laggards, this geographical digital divide needs to be minimized.

The reasons for the digital divide are numerous and include hard, as well as soft factors. In the second session research results will be used for explaining the impact of ICT infrastructure (hard factor) and skills (soft factor) on the digital divide.

Overall, this JANUS workshop will bring together analyses and experiences of IST projects that …

· address the issue of a geographical digital divide between members and new members of the European Union

· explore ways to influence the hard and soft factors leading to a digital divide

… in order to derive policy recommendations that help to bridge the digital divide.

Objectives

The workshop aims to discuss the state of the art research on the digital divide on a global and European scale from European research projects and other organisations. It tries to identify factors leading to the digital divide and measure how to overcome them. In detail the workshop’s objectives are the following:

i) To identify reasons for worldwide geographical digital divide

ii) To spot and measure a geographical digital divide between Western and Central Europe

iii) To analyse factors contributing to geographical digital divide within Central European countries

iv) To understand the role of infrastructure (as a hard factor) and skills (as a soft factor) in geographical digital divide

v) To derive implications for public policy and governance on national and European level to bridge the geographical digital divide in the wider Europe

Expected Results

It is intended that this workshop will have the following results:

- Consolidation of results of European and other research on socio-economic aspects such as e-inclusion and e-skills with research on regional and sectoral development

- Networking the socio-economic community: Workshop participants will be drawn from EU Member States, Accession Countries and European institutions.

- Provision of analysis and extraction of recommendations for policy-makers in the EC, governments and industry

- Contribution to policy recommendations to the European Commission summarized in the workshop report

- Identification of research gaps