<< Background >>Despite the significant amounts of public investment devoted to enhancing e-government over the last ten years in EU countries, there has only been an increase by 15% of citizens’ use of this service, posing a challenge to national governments. Effective e-government can provide a wide variety of benefits for EU citizens, particularly money savings, better personal planning, increased participation in the decision-making. As 88% of adults (+25) go online, not even half of the group report to use the Internet as means to interact with public authorities & online services (EC, 2020). Basically, literature has gone beyond “have/have-not” category for Internet usage, and it focuses on the different levels of skills, of trust, of information access of adults when using Internet (second-level digital divide) and on the offline benefits adults get in the offline world thanks to the strategic usage of online resources (third-level digital divide). Most recent research shows how e-government is still a matter of affluent, high-educated and urban young male people (Rodriguez-Hevia et al., 2019; Morotea et al., 2020). Women, migrants, and low-skilled/low-educated suffer from second- and third-level digital divide as factors as lack of trust toward e-government and digital divide-related capabilities are at the basis of their limited usage of e-government services (UN 2018).Striking figures on the new EU Digital Action Plan show that 39% of adult educators have insufficient digital skills, and don’t have adequate pedagogical skills in defining new strategies regarding e-government. As most of digital adult education has focused on the first digital divide, there are no current strategies in terms of tackling second- and third-level digital divide. In fact, most of adult centres focus on basic digital skills, but do not go in the direction of autonomy in the rights exertion by adults. It is important to create a bridge with digitally excluded adults and e-government, and define a strategy that blends trust, digital competencies and build autonomy among low-skilled/low-educated adults (+40), particularly of disadvantaged categories, in the fields of e-health, online job research and usage of public agency services, bill & taxation e-payment, and e-participation portals. We won’t focus on specific device-oriented education, but we focus on problem solving and critical thinking in everyday scenarios that adults face and make e-government closer, practical and pragmatic, showing in concrete ways how life with and without e-government is, and how adults can take advantage and overcome barriers. We want to build also the necessary pedagogical competencies of adult centres/educators to tackle the second/third-level of digital divide. The difference in usage has been particularly striking when comparing rural and urban data, as well as gender data, according to the context just provided. Plus, we have interviewed n.60 adult educators involved in the 6 countries involved and they have shown limited knowledge on e-government service, so that training schemes in adult centres are mainly focused on basic digital skills and not on the second- or third-level digital divide. This lack of strategic change within adult education providers is mainly related to lack of confidence among adult educators and, reflexively, in the educational methodologies used. We have seen how adult centres are not ready yet for this digital transformation that is taking over in EU, & their training lessons are lagging and only focus on improving the usual basic skills such as mobile phone usage, emails etc. but they do not involve adults in developing critical capabilities regarding the e-government services.<< Objectives >>Despite the significant amounts of public investment devoted to enhancing e-government over the last ten years in EU countries, there has only been an increase by 15% of citizens’ use of this service, posing a challenge to national governments. Effective e-government can provide a wide variety of benefits for EU citizens, particularly money savings, better personal planning, increased participation in the decision-making. As 88% of adults (+25) go online , not even half of the group report to use the Internet as means to interact with public authorities & online services(EC, 2020).Basically, literature has gone beyond “have/have-not” category for Internet usage, and it focuses on the different levels of skills, of trust, of information access of adults when using Internet (second-level digital divide) and on the offline benefits adults get in the offline world thanks to the strategic usage of online resources (third-level digital divide). Most recent research shows how e-government is still a matter of affluent, high-educated and urban young male people (Rodriguez-Hevia et al., 2019; Morotea et al., 2020). Women, migrants, and low-skilled/low-educated suffer from second- and third-level digital divide (ibid.; ibid.) as factors as lack of trust toward e-government and digital divide-related capabilities are at the basis of their limited usage of e-government services (UN 2018).What is more, striking figures on the new European Digital Action Plan show that 39% of adult educators have insufficient digital skills, and don’t have adequate pedagogical skills in defining new strategies regarding e-government. As most of digital adult education has focused on the first digital divide, there are no current strategies in terms of tackling second- and third-level digital divide. In fact, most of adult centres focus on basic digital skills, but do not go in the direction of autonomy in the rights exertion by adults. It is important to create a bridge with digitally excluded adults and e-government, and define a strategy that blends trust, digital competencies and build autonomy among low-skilled/low-educated adults (+40), particularly of disadvantaged categories, in the fields of e-health, online job research and usage of public agency services, bill & taxation e-payment, and e-participation portals. We won’t focus on specific device-oriented education, but we focus on problem solving and critical thinking in everyday scenarios that adults face and make e-government closer, practical and pragmatic, showing in concrete ways how life with and without e-government is, and how adults can take advantage and overcome barriers. We want to build also the necessary pedagogical competencies of adult centres/educators to tackle the second / third-level of digital divide.Dig-Equal project wants to:1. Define the main skills and expectations on the main adoption factors for e-government interaction by adults, defining different everyday scenarios together with the target group. As such, we focus on how adults can contextually exert their different e-rights and which methodology can adult educators follow.2. Improve and strengthen the competencies and skills of adult educators and low-skilled adults through a training course on the different aspects of e-government services based on a user-perspective. In this way, we want to strengthen the role of adult education as a gateway for digital inclusion of adults.3. Develop a quest-based interactive web-app for adults to choose and understand everyday situations and compare how “life with and without e-government is” through a gamified approach, useful both as an educational tool for adult educators and for self-learning in a visual and immediate way, very apt for dis-empowered groups and for culturally diverse groups. It wants to encourage from the final users’ perspective the practice of problem solving, critical thinking, a critical approach to digital identity.<< Implementation >>To go beyond a simple approach of being able or not to access to technology and Internet, we need to focus on the digital transformation of adult centres, making them become local platforms that can really be functional to the wider e-strategies of public administrations with regards to e-government. We want to engage low-skilled/low-qualified adults, particularly the ones which use Internet but do not access to the opportunities of e-government, to discuss and engage with us on the current barriers and problems they face on the Internet by focusing on practical everyday scenarios.In this sense, through the support of adult educators, we will be able to reflect on the current gaps regarding e-government access, usage, understanding and exploitation by adults by following decision-making patterns and tackling the context-related issues which render digital education difficult to implement and acquire.So, we will be able to go beyond a device-centred approach. In synthesis, we foresee:1. The creation of local action groups constituted by adults, adult educators and local stakeholders to ‘map’ the current gaps and barriers in e-government access and digital education2. The development of a framework for adult educators and adult centres which will be able to test and validate through a joint-staff training (C1) and pilot at local level3. the development of a learning course for adults and a toolbox of materials to support adult educators to complement their current digital education classes4. the co-development of a gamified web-app to make adults and adult educators critically reflect on how life with and without e-government is. In this way, we will make targeted groups reflect on a concrete level and make digital education closer to the closer needs of adults.As partners, we foresee 3 transnational meetings and 6 multiplier events.During the project development, we have planned a full dissemination agenda to reach local, regional, national and European partners to favour methodology endorsement and work.<< Results >>As main results, we want to develop: 1) a Framework of competencies for adult educators to engage low-skilled/low-qualified adults based on the local engagement of adults and adult educators. Through the analysis of different e-government areas (economic, social, labour, health etc.) and the current status of online access, we reflect on the digital gaps to develop the pedagogical & digital competencies to make e-government closer.The framework builds the basis of a methodology to be adopted by adult education centres to expand the scope of their current digital education practices2) A training course for adult educators and adults as a sum of two main blocks:- Nonformal education tools for adults to stimulate the reasoning of adults along different e-government areas. In each area, we will reason on the different digital divides (first, second & third) and how to support adult educators in deploying innovative materials- A course for adults focused on the different e-government scenarios and tools to support them in practically respond, and focus on the possible strategies which go beyond the barriers they face. Courses on e-health, e-bills, online payments, e-participation etc concepts and specific portals will be depicted.3) A quest-based gamified web-app to facilitate how adults understand their everyday situations focusing on “life with and without e-government”. We want adults to play different scenarios ordering the steps leading to digital actions, in this way we lower down the barriers of mistrust and complexity which often discourage adults.We will involve 120 adults and 60 adult educators throughout the project, improving their sense of critical thinking as well as better view on e-government provided by the EU governments.