Partner: European Commission (DEVCO)

Digitalisation is one of the objectives of the new European Commission and has been selected as one of the priorities for the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI). The EU has committed in the EU Human Rights and Democracy Plan (HRDAP) of 2020 to “reinforce exchanges and develop training for EU staff on the use of digital technologies and AI and their impact on human rights and democratic processes.”

However, digitization can have a steep learning curve. Without the right basic information at in hand before a project starts, implementers of digitization projects risk reinventing the proverbial wheel or risking making the same mistakes again and again. The opportunities that digitization provides can only be realised if projects build on lessons from the past systematically. In particular, when attempting to integrate a rights-based approach into existing initiatives, developing effective digitisation projects can be a challenging task.

The Handbook Democracy and Digitalisation will attempt to bring together key aspects of EU policy and provide concrete examples of not just how to avoid making common mistakes in digitization projects, but crucially how to do digitization right. In doing so it will take a storytelling approach based on some of the most pertinent success stories developed by the EU DEVCO and other international donors. It will also provide a frank account of what implementers can do to avoid these problems and provide a set of key partners and best practices to make implementers lives easier.

Keywords: Development Policy, Human Rights, Digitization, Technology Policy

Year: 2021

This report will be available soon for download.