The ‘citizen spot’ is a multiservice physical counter where a specialised mediator assists citizens in accessing a portfolio of online public services, and then teaches them how to use it autonomously thereafter. In the last few years, digital public services delivery has grown exponentially in Portugal, providing the population with the advantages of an electronic approach. This allows a non-paper-based bureaucracy, with no time and geographic barriers nor other physical-related constraints, while benefiting from more integration and efficiency of the public administration itself.
Nevertheless, the use of such digital services has been far behind the supply, raising the need to go further and develop new strategies to reverse the situation and allow citizens to benefit from the available digital services. Through the combination of public digital services with the on-site assistance of a specialised mediator, Portugal embraced an initiative. This builds trust and confidence in the uptake of digital services, by providing face-to-face assistance and training to those who are not comfortable in doing so by themselves.
The process of assisting digitally unskilled people in becoming more familiar with digital public services boosts social equity, in particular with citizens from peripheral regions and the elderly. These are dimensions specifically tackled by the solidarity citizen spot (SCS) and the mobile citizen spot (MCS) tools, which have been added to the initial citizen spot project. The SCS aims to extend the benefits of this initiative to day-care centres, nursing homes and residential facilities for the elderly. The MCS is nothing more than a mobile kit, made up of a computer and a printer, operated by a trained mediator who visits the facilities regularly to engage and empower a group that is normally neglected when talking about ICTs. Because the MCS is operated by the mediator in a van, it can quickly reach the affected areas in case of emergency.
The social inclusiveness is one of the benefits of the citizen spot initiative, and it is accomplished by providing all citizens – despite age, literacy, economic capacity or geographic distribution – with equal access to an on-site walk-through in the use of digital public services. One of the primordial objectives of the citizen spots is to empower citizens, teaching them to become more comfortable and autonomous in the use of ICTs in general and digital public services in particular. This in turn helps to fight digital exclusion and smooths the transition towards digital-only.