PAAS: Assisted Citizen Access Points in Tuscany

Krems.
The second speaker in this morning session at CeDEM 2011 is Sara Tavazzi, who works in the Italian region of Tuscany. She’s introducing a network of assisted access points to citizen services called PAAS. Some 45% of Tuscan families owned a PC in 2003, and only some 37% had Internet access; while this will have increased in the meantime, those are relatively low figures, then.

The Tuscan region pursued three actions to improve e-government, then – for public administration, for businesses, and for citizens; the latter was approached through a new regional law that also introduced the PAAS network, as part of broader efforts towards citizen participation in regional decision making, better services, and better participatory deliberation processes. Digital citizenship, digital rights, information flows, and general citizen engagement are also goals of this.

The PAAS network consists of 274 assisted Internet access points, with 159 of the 287 Tuscan municipalities involved. There are 260 volunteer groups comprising 1300 volunteers involved here, and over 50,000 citizens are registered users, resulting in over 500,000 unique visits.

Generally, the network is open to everyone, breaks down the digital divide, guarantees information access, promotes social inclusion, involves disadvantaged groups, promotes digital citizenship, and differs from simple Internet access points because of the assisted nature.

Each PAAS has its own appropriately chosen location, addressing specific target groups and providing relevant activities and services. The project is funded by the Tuscan region and managed at the local level by specific municipalities. Volunteer organisations provide basic training and organise activities; volunteers have an important role as facilitators, then. PAAS points can be understood as Living Labs, then.

The success of these access points was monitored through a number of research projects, and PAAS points were also used to promote specific further initiatives, such as the ‘electronic sanitary card’; a citizen smart card. In 2009, there was a special initiative involving the opening of 36 new points in 36 remote mountain villages, providing a participation portal for local populations.