Toward a digital citizenship: eServices

ICT is stimulating changes in the way most people earn their incomes; altering the balance between our roles as consumer and producers; changing the way we educate succeeding generation and train ourselves; changing the fruition of world’s cultural heritage; transforming the delivery of health care; altering the way we govern ourselves; changing the way we form communities; altering the way we obtain and communicate information; contributing to bridge some cultural or physical gaps; and modifying pattern of activity among the elderly. This is not a complete list of changes, but highlights some of the most prominent and important effects of ICT on our society. We are witnessing relevant changes due both to technological enhancements and modification of user requirements/expectations. In recent times the digital domain, once strictly populated by professional users and computer Scientists, open up to former digitally divided. Technology is evolving toward a mature “calm” phase, “users” are overlapping more and more “citizens” and they consider technology and eServices as an everyday commodity, to buy a ticket, to meet a medical doctor, to access weather forecast. It is a common understanding that recent generations represent a discontinuity if compared with the past ones. How do we identify a digital native? They are the eCitizens. This paper presents views of a society changing under the influence of advanced information technology. Computers have been around for about half a century and their social effects have been described under many headings. “In conducting research four years ago online to determine people's uses for the global computer communications network, I became aware that there was a new social institution, an electronic commons, developing. It was exciting to explore this new social institution. Others online shared this excitement. I discovered from those who wrote me that the people I was writing about were citizens of the Net, or Netizens. “ (1995) Michael and Ronda Hauben's - "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet." Computers have been around for about half a century and their social effects have been described under many headings. Society is changing under the influence of advanced information technology; we face fundamental transformations in social organisation and structure, as it will be outlines in the next paragraphs. Such a change is much more evident in the recent period of time. This even because young citizens are changing and the change is not smooth it’s a real discontinuity, young think different! We are witnessing relevant changes due both to technological enhancements and modification of user requirements/expectations. ICT is stimulating changes in the way most people earn their incomes; altering the balance between our roles as consumer and producers; changing the way we educate succeeding generation and train ourselves; changing the fruition of world’s cultural heritage; transforming the delivery of health care; altering the way we govern ourselves; changing the way we form and manage communities; altering the way we obtain and communicate information; contributing to bridge some cultural or physical gaps; and modifying pattern of activity among the elderly, last but not least potentially contributing to a green world. This is not a complete list of changes, but highlights some of the most prominent and important effects of ICT on our society.