An Extended Approach to E-Inclusion and Its Implications for Romania

Abstract: Depending on the existing social patterns and trends, development of information society creates new opportunities and risks and restructures the established areas of public policy. For example, e-inclusion becomes more and more today's predominant form of social inclusion. Despite the diversity of approaches developed, its intrinsic multi-dimension nature and the challenges posed by the continuous evolution of global digital technologies and networks make e-inclusion a problematic scientific and political concept. This article proposes an extended approach to e-inclusion, seen as the cumulative result of three interlocking contributors - i) global evolution of digital technologies and networks, ii) the levels of ICT access, usage and skills and iii) the existing social structures - and examine its policy implications for Romania. An important conclusion arises from this exploration: Romania is poorly prepared to cope with e-inclusion challenges. The country's relatively incipient stage of information society development and its serious social problems and the emergence of new forms of digital divide demand a holistic policy response capable of coherently capturing and tackling all factors of e-inclusion, beyond the conventional fragmentation of public policy areas. Without it, social inclusion process will be hindered and Romania will not fully reap the social and economic benefits of information society. Keywords: information society; ICT adoption and diffusion; social inclusion; e-inclusion; Romania. JEL classification: O33; O38; I28; L86. Introduction Transition to information society requires significant socio-economic changes1 and broadens the scope and instruments of traditional fields of public policy. In addition, it poses serious challenges to social sciences2. As it has already been proved, the adoption and use of information and communications technologies (ICT)3 result in significant economic benefits - in terms of industrial productivity and competitiveness gains4 - as well as positive social externalities - human and social capital development (e.g. Zinnbauer, 2007); political participation (e.g. Gibson et al., 2004); social equity contribution (e.g. Mossberger et al., 2008). However, ICT are not evenly diffused within and across the countries: the rapid pace of ICT development and different degrees of their adoption and use have already brought about significant digital divides among individuals, social groups and countries5. Due to the negative effects of digital divides6 - e.g. "global economic stratification" (Warschauer, 2003) and social exclusion - bridging them should be considered as an important policy objective by both developed and lagging-behind countries in information society development. In this paper, I first propose a threelevel conceptual framework in which e-inclusion is seen as the cumulative result of the interaction of three main interlocking determinants: i) global evolution of digital technologies and networks, ii) the levels of ICT access, usage and skills and iii) the existing social structures in global evolution of ICT. I then proceed with explaining its policy implications for Romania. While the first determi ? ant is rather an exogenous factor of national e-inclusion process, the other two are highly dependent on a country' specific context. In the first section of the paper I deal with the intricacy of e-inclusion concept. In the second section, on the basis of the most important contributions to the clarification of e-inclusion concept, I set out the three main determinants of e-inclusion and reveal their intertwining. After examining the most relevant indicators to e-inclusion in Romania, the fourth section shows the policy implications for Romania deriving from the conceptual framework developed. It also sketches the features of the holistic public policy response the country needs to develop in order to cope with the barriers to e-inclusion process. …