Six projects funded under the Horizon 2020 programme, MIICT, REBUILD, NADINE, MICADO, EASYRIGHTS and WELCOME, are tackling the challenge of how to better integrate migrants in European societies using ICT solutions. In October 2020, they organised, in cooperation with the European Commission, the Joint Migration Policy Roundtables to try and answer this question. The result was a whitepaper, which is intended as a strategical input for improving integration and shaping future migration policy of the EU. It focuses on ICT-enabled solutions, participatory design and co-creation of these solutions, and end-to-end collaboration between the various parties involved in migrant integration in European societies.
Broadly speaking, digitalisation of public services related to the migration sector could improve the effectiveness and accessibility of such public services, easing the integration of migrants into their host societies.
But what particular challenges do migrants face, how can digital solutions help, and what role can the European Commission play? The policy recommendations provide some answers to these questions.
Policy recommendations: A new approach to digital services for migrants
Regarding the delivery of digital services to migrants, the projects recommend involving multiple stakeholders, including migrants, from the early design process to testing and validation. The different challenges encountered by these projects make it clear that involving migrants, public authorities and local NGOs is essential to ensure ICT tools can provide services tailored to migrants’ needs. In particular, the projects believe that the involvement of migrants at the early design stages of digital services and the sharing of best practices amongst stakeholders will lead to better ICT-based support for migrants. In the whitepaper, the projects suggest that the EU could play an important mediating role in supporting the exchange of experiences and best practices. Furthermore, the projects recommend that, from an ICT perspective, a platform with different projects that gives the opportunity to share knowledge and good practices with other professionals, stakeholders across Europe and beyond will be useful.
These projects also recommend developing digital platforms that are practical, user-friendly and have concise information available in many languages so migrants can quickly understand which services they need to access or how to complete a procedure. The whitepaper also points out that having various different agencies with specific responsibilities creates a fragmented environment that is difficult for migrants to navigate, especially in a second language. The projects believe that a centralised reference point with databases and tools could help. The whitepaper points out that digital services could be centralised in a one-stop shop environment where services are connected to simplify and unify public procedures and ensure that migrants receive a coherent and streamlined response from public institutions.
Regarding ICT tools and digital services for supporting integration, the authors of the whitepaper recommend for the Commission to encourage central governments, local authorities and public bodies to produce open APIs (software interfaces) and share open data. The projects believe this would make it possible to create a diversity of user-centric tools and services that cater for the variety of needs of migrants and refugees, while safeguarding transparency. In order to increase the awareness of local authorities and to promote migrants’ integration within hosting communities, the experience from the migration project shows that it is important that the Commission supports the development of innovative ICT-tools and services such as serious gaming and other creative online tools. The projects also recommend for the Commission to launch information and marketing campaigns to disseminate apps and tools that have been developed through EU projects.
In the area of migration, ensuring transparency and privacy are particularly important issues. The whitepaper recommends that the EC proactively engage with the Member States on the issue of surveillance. Transparent communication is essential to tackle and overcome migrants’ widespread lack of trust in state-provided technology. As a potential solution to this issue, the whitepaper recommends supporting and promoting the concept of a “Self-Sovereign Digital Identity”, which could help to boost the access to and use of digital services, while ensuring the data ownership of the user, helping build trust. As a further recommendation to the Commission, the whitepaper recommends establishing political and technical EU-wide digital government standards for enhancing and scaling up services and for enabling cross-border interoperability of technologies. The whitepaper recommends that this should go hand in hand with strong support of experimental ICT solutions and technologies such as cloud computing, all while taking into account issues such as privacy and security. The whitepaper points out that a major role of the Commission could also focus on the encouragement of national governments to become an accelerator for innovation and the digital transformation of public administrations and support systems.
On participatory design and co-creation of solutions, the projects stress the importance of understanding the lives of migrants and refugees as a prerequisite for participation. The projects believe service design and strategies should not aim for “one size fits all” solutions because people’s conditions are incredibly varied and diverse. The projects also suggest aaddressing specific issues and challenges from a wider perspective, involving the entire local community, including citizenship, Public Authorities, civil society and other minorities. Furthermore, the projects highlight the necessity of co-design for trust building, as working together on solutions means eliminating distrust and foster mutual acceptance of migrants and their host society. Additionally, projects propose new methodologies to turn participation into action, going beyond public consultation and finding new pathways for involving all citizens as a first step to building a successful project. Finally, projects recommend piloting the culture of co-design as an internal cultural change in public administrations.
Furthermore, the whitepaper provides recommendations on additional topics, such as multi-stakeholder collaboration, innovation, research and development and improving the ICT-skills of both public authorities and migrants. We invite you to read the Joint Migration Policy Whitepaper.
Next steps
These policy recommendations provide useful input to the Commission for a strengthened digital government policy. In the Council conclusions ‘Shaping Europe’s digital future’, Member States called on the Commission ‘to propose a reinforced EU digital government policy, bearing in mind the e-inclusion of all citizens and private actors’, In the Action plan on Integration and Inclusion 2021-2027, the Commission announced it will work on an inclusive EU e-government action plan, promoting human-centric digital public services for citizens, including migrants, and engaging migrants in the creation and delivery of digital public services. The Commission will take the policy recommendations of the joint migration policy paper into consideration in the policy-making process of a strengthened EU digital government policy.
How CEF Building Blocks can help
The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Building Blocks are open, reusable digital solutions that can be used in any cross-border European digital project. They can help realise some of the policy recommendations presented by the Horizon 2020 projects in this whitepaper. In this article we take a look at some of the whitepaper's recommendations, and how the CEF Building Blocks could help.