Digital Skills for an Ageing Europe: Experience-based recommendations for policy making

As an international initiative co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission, the DISK project aims at nurturing seniors’ digital skills as leverage for social inclusion, emancipation and active aging.

Towards the end of the project, participating organizations compiled and consolidated detailed Policy Recommendations stemming from the implementation’s experience and conceived to support policy makers in operationalizing new interventions addressing from a policy perspective challenge and opportunities in the same fields addressed by the project.

Although the share of older people who use the internet has increased steadily, older people are still among the largest group affected by digital inequalities: digital inclusion of older people has been recognized as a pressing issue on many fronts, and has to go beyond merely providing the technological infrastructure.

Strengthening digital skills has therefore become an integral part of national digital transformation strategies. Special attention should be paid to the development of digital skills as one of the main factors for accelerating economic growth.

To this extent, in finalization of this deliverable, partners putted together 9 policy recommendations that tackles actions needed to scale up the multiplier effect of the project, and support the long term sustainability of its outcomes.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital development through digital transformation has become ever more important. Enhancing the availability of products and services and empowering citizens, workers, and students in their daily affairs and needs during the lockdown has become a clear priority for all countries, and the ability to take advantage of the progress made in the digital sphere has become an important factor in determining sustainability.

This predominantly concerns older persons who are less digitally connected than youth who were born into the digital age. The accelerated digitalization during the COVID-19 pandemic has further emphasized these inequalities, as many older persons struggled to access essential goods and services – from online vaccination appointment registrations, to pensions, food and medication during lockdowns – if they could not access them online.

Our dependence on digital technologies during the pandemic has therefore focused policy attention on the importance of digital inclusion. All deliverables and project results are available for free, in open access format and in Multilanguage version via the official Open Education Resource Platform of the project: https://diskproject.eu/toolkit/