No abstract

Digital inclusion research has been critically important in drawing an understanding of how policies, society, organisations, and information technologies can all come together within a national environment that aspires to be a digital nation. This research aims to examine the factors influencing e-Inclusion in the UK within a digital-by-default policy for government services. This study is pursued through combining the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour (DTPB) with Use and Gratification Theory (U&G) and conducting a self-administered survey targeting 510 Internet users to study the level of citizens engagement with egovernment services in the UK. By incorporating gratification, trust, risk and external factors (i.e. self-efficacy, accessibility, availability, affordability) within DTPB, the proposed model of e-Inclusion used in the paper demonstrates a considerable explanatory and predictive power and offers a frame of reference to study the acceptance and usage of e-government within a national context where nearly all government transactions are digital-by-default. The findings revealed six dimensions as key inhibitors for e-Inclusion, namely: demographic, economic, social, cultural, political, and infrastructural.

The usage of video communication in public services can alleviate some of the existing problems these services face in their adoption and also help in increasing the level of outreach to citizens. In this article we focus on the usage of video-to-video (V2V) communication in municipality services for ICT education of senior citizens. For this purpose, our study focuses on determining criteria that are important for both the teachers and citizens in using such an innovative service. This paper reports on the findings from focus group consultations conducted with teachers and students, in this case senior citizens, of a municipality in Spain who was piloting the use of V2V services for adult education. The research identified several criteria relevant for consideration when deploying V2V as part of a local government service portfolio, of which, trust, quality of service and convenience emerged as common for all stakeholders involved.