The use of ICT is moving into a new era, beyond uses which are essentially individual and functional and towards a new world of social use. Vit@l Society: the new social use of ICT charts this shift in ICT use and explores how it can be harnessed to achieve wider objectives.

Many factors have made this new world of social use possible including the increasing number of people with the skills and access to ICT and, more critically, the rapid increase in availability of internet infrastructure.

The central role of ICT within economic competitiveness is widely recognised; however ICT now has the potential to achieve far wider social and cultural goals. The social use of ICT can play a key role in building sustainable communities, achieving social cohesion and reconnecting people to democratic governance as well as helping to achieve wider social policy objectives such as tackling barriers to labour market inclusion. Active measures should be taken to stimulate the social use of ICT to help achieve all of these goals. This requires new policy and funding measures at EU, national and regional levels. Proposals are set out in our recommendations and in the Manifest which accompanies this book.

This work is the result of collaboration by the Vit@l Society transnational partnership consisting of project teams in the Netherlands, the UK and Latvia working together with the support of the European Commission’s EQUAL programme. It reflects both the commonality of our work and the differences in our approaches and cultures. EQUAL is an initiative which tests and promotes new ways of combating discrimination and inequalities in the labour market.

Vit@l Society; the new social use of ICT highlights the experience of all three partners in using ICT in a social context to fulfil the aims of their individual projects. Chapter One explains what “social use of ICT” means, and discusses what is needed to develop it further. Chapter Two gives details of the projects the partners are running and explains how the social use of ICT has contributed to the success of these. Chapter Three looks at the role of ICT in terms of EU strategies and links this new development in ICT use to EU policy. The book ends with a list of recommendations to policy makers at European, national and regional level to actively develop the social use of ICT.