Digital skills
Familiarity and confidence in using digital tools helps people to establish and maintain social contacts. In addition, digital skills are becoming increasingly important for accessing rights and services.
Insights
Digital skills are linked to access to government systems, such as the use of a DIGID.
Navigating the digital landscape in the Netherlands can also be difficult for newcomers who are digitally literate in their own language. For example, the EU labor migrant project has shown that the use of DIGID is perceived as difficult. The links between the various government websites (including DIGID, Mijn Overheid, and Belastingsdienst), combined with poorly translated or untranslatable content on the website, make it difficult to arrange things.
Newcomers have poor access to much digital information and services.
Reasons for this include a lack of digital skills, not having the right digital tools, and not having access to the internet.
Newcomers who are digitally illiterate and/or illiterate are particularly difficult to reach with information.
Design questions
How can you make digital services accessible to newcomers?
How can the current range of digital support services also be tailored to the needs of newcomers? For whom digital skills in themselves are not always a bottleneck, but sometimes it is a combination of different factors that limits access to digital services.
How can existing digital support centers (such as those offered in libraries, for example) be set up in such a way that they are also accessible to newcomers?