Are we pushing groups of citizens out of the welfare system?

The then Prime Minister Lars Løkke said in September 2011 that the goal of communication between citizens and the municipality and state in the future must be digital by 2014. The argument he puts forward is that a large proportion of the population around 95% is on the Internet. The argument does not hold, just because people are on the Internet or have access to the Internet is not the same as those citizens can find out how to use the ICT tools that are made available. Also a large part of the responsibility to understanding administrative service system is being moved to the citizens themselves and in this citizens are becoming their own "social workers".

The political system communicates via the public media; requirements, goals and offers technologies for information, communication and self-service, but to support this strategy no education to support the ICT-tools are offered. We as citizens can take IT courses at the library, but are this enough help to help us as citizens to achieve the goal?

A large proportion of citizens who are early-adaptors of the new technologies may even acquire the skills by teach themselves these, but there is also a large middle group of users that will have to acquire additional skills in order for the digitalisation of the communication to be successful. In addition, I ask in this post:

"What do we do with those groups of citizens who can not or have the skills to self-serve?"

The groups I am thinking of are:

• Disabled persons who for physical reasons can not communicate with the public

• The mentally ill who do not have the psychic profit or skills to take responsibility for themselves

• Newcomers to the Danish society, which have not yet acquired the language skills to speak and write Danish and nor are socialized through education or other communities to understand the Danish welfare system or the linguistic categories we use.

• International workers are missing information in English

• Citizens who lack IT skills to communicate digitally, for example the group of elderly who are not on-line, for example because they say: "it is they become too old to grasp," or who prefer the personal face-to-face communication.

• Citizens who lack the linguistic skills to understand concepts such as "What does "individual income "(in a form) mean and how do I find out what my individual income?"

• Citizens who have no understanding of what their responsibilities are as citizens in relation to the communication and the legislative.

The Citizens Feelings

The citizen pays taxes to the welfare system and is in return given welfare benefits. The citizen can get service and financial support. In this service there is general information for citizens and also information on legislation. Besides services to and communication with the citizens, they need help to fill in application forms, be it physically or through self-service systems.

People have certain expectations of the welfare system, they expect service and they economic support, but if the quality of service becomes a problem to the citizen for getting their economic support, they express themselves with strong feelings. They have feelings about communicating with employees within the welfare system or about the ICT systems, more specific the self-service tools, they "shall" use.

Expression of very strong emotions from the citizens is one of the things that stick out, even now, in my analysis of interviews with 100 citizens about communication with the welfare system. Citizens feel that they "are entitled to benefits" because they have paid their taxes. If the citizens experience that “they are prevented from reaching their goal” ore at least not given the right ore enough support by the service system the citizens sometimes see the system an adversary. When this happens it is due to poor: Information, Communication and Self-service systems. 

Up and Running

KristinaMargrethe hvordan starter jeg? 


Ja til tider skal man starte netop der hvor man ikke havde forestillet sig det - udenfor en selv, skabe en virtuel identitet og dermed søge ind i sig selv og grundelementerne i arbejdet... Hvem er jeg, hvad laver jeg og hvad har jeg at sige der kunne være spændende? 



I am going to start with my research: How do I work?
I am a Detective... in Communication between the Citizens and the Municipality, and my aim is to:

investigate |inˈvestiˌgāt|verb [ trans. ]carry out a systematic or formal inquiry to discover and examine the facts of (an incident, allegation, etc.) so as to establish the truth.• carry out research or study into (a subject, typically one in ascientific or academic field) so as to discover facts or information• make inquiries as to the character, activities, or background of(someone) ORIGIN early 16th cent.: from Latin investigat- ‘traced out,’ from theverb investigare, from in- ‘into’ + vestigare ‘track, trace out.’

In order to:
solve |sälv; sôlv|verb [ trans. ]find an answer to, explanation for, or means of effectively dealing with (a problem or mystery)