In this August newsletter, we will take a further deep-dive into CDW's activities and outcomes of our presence at this year's Folkemøde on Bornholm and how the center has been influencing and setting the agenda for digital welfare.
On
June 15, CDW co-hosted an interactive panel dialogue on digital in-/exclusion of youth titled "
Digital Citizenship in the Shadow of the Digital Native" together with the Danish folk-highschool, Krogerup Højskole. The panel consisted of
Louise Holck, Director at Danish Institute of Human Rights,
Noah Sturis, IT-spokesperson for Alternativet,
Tomas Vlk, leader of Kritik Digital at Krogerup Højskole,
Oliver Anton Lunow, Project Manager at Ungdomsbureauet, and our very own
Søren Skaarup, post.doc. at the IT University of Copenhagen. The event was facilitated by
Clara Nepper Winther from Krogerup Højskole. The purpose of the event was to challenge and question the idea of young people as "digital natives" and ask what consequences public digitalization of the welfare sector has for young people as digital citizens. The panel dialogue between the panelists and the audience sparked a lot of interesting insights, from identifying problems and listening to lived experiences, to ideating ideas and visions for a future "youth friendly" digital welfare state and digitalization strategy. How do we engage and involve young people in public digitalization as a democratic proces, securing human rights for all? How do we prevent increasing inequality between those with digital skills and those without and challenge the idea of youth as "digital natives"? How do we deal with citizens' data as a currency in the welfare state? And how do we ignite the political debate on how and why we digitalize? These where just some of the questions we touched upon in the 1-hour discussion, where both young and old, end-users, system-representatives and developers alike participated with their perspectives.
On
June 16,
Søren Skaarup, post.doc., and
Irina Papazu, Head of Center, from CDW participated in panel debates on
solutions to digital welfare and
green transition within educational institutions, respectively. Here we again highlighted the increasing inequality that arises in delivering digital welfare services, how civil rights are being compromised in the pursuit of more efficient public administration procedures, and how this creates digital marginalisation of vulnerable people. Public digitalization strategies must understand the diversity of user-journeys and digital skills in order to secure civil rights for all in the deliverance of welfare services.
Irina Papazu stressed the need for changing the universities' organizational culture, increasing interdisciplinarity and more collaboration between universities in order to realize the green transition in educational institutions.
On behalf of CDW, we would like to thank all the organizers and participants from each event at Folkemødet 2023. We are extremely happy to ignite the debate of a more inclusive digitalization policy and co-create visions for better digital welfare together with relevant stakeholders and fellow digital citizens. If you find these perpectives interesting, or would like to co-create an event shining light on the importance of digital welfare, please reach out to us on liny@itu.dk.
