Who cares about digital literacy of 54+ citizens?!

Abstract

Nowadays, information about mostly any social, commercial, public or cultural activity is available on the Internet. If it is not, it does not exist. The age of digital transformation, digital society and digital economy is characterised by e-activities, e-events and e-services. The focus of ICT developers and experts is on how to transform regular services to digital ones, as well as on how to develop protocols for communication machine to machine (Big Data for Smart City concepts). They succeeded; they found a way to apply those concepts to a wide area of social and commercial matters. But, what about citizens? Who cares about their ability to use all the e-services available today and the opportunity to be present at all e-events and e-activities? Availability of information and services to all citizens is a basic human right. The ability to use them and the chance to acquire that ability must also be an elementary human right. The author of this article wonders whether this really is the case. This article presents the facts about digital literacy and e-inclusion of 54+ citizens, especially senior citizens, which can be found in official statistical databases (EUROSTAT or the Croatian Bureau of Statistics). The author also talks about different approaches to raising the digital literacy rate of 54+ citizens. The third part focuses on public resources that could be used in the process of conducting a systematic programme and in making suggestions for further steps in achieving the general goal - increasing the number of users of e-services.