EN Official Journal of the European Union C 13/104

Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on ‘Social innovation, networking and digital communication’

(own-initiative opinion)

(2016/C 013/16)

Rapporteur: Bernardo HERNÁNDEZ BATALLER

On 10 July 2014, the European Economic and Social Committee decided to draw up an own-initiative opinion, under Rule 29(2) of its Rules of Procedure, on:

‘Social innovation, networking and digital communication’.

The Section for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society, which was responsible for preparing the Committee’s work on the subject, adopted its opinion on 31 August 2015.

At its 510th plenary session, held on 16 and 17 September 2015 (meeting of 16 September), the European Economic and Social Committee adopted the following opinion by 204 votes to 1 with 11 abstentions.

1. Conclusions and recommendations

1.1. Social innovation and collaborative networks must be fully used in order to boost participation by the public and civil society in general in designing and managing EU policies, by means of distributed, collective and bottom-up projects that strengthen more direct democracy.

1.2. Universal access to the new technologies in general, and broad-band internet in particular, must continue to be a priority for the European Union, and it should be seen as a service of general interest that must narrow the digital divide and counter the consequences of the ensuing social exclusion.

1.3. The new information and communication technologies, with the support of social innovation and use of collaborative networks, should play an important role in creating skilled, high-quality jobs by supporting projects seeking to set up innovative businesses and generate initiatives that can bring down current unemployment rates.

1.4. The EESC sees strengthening digital training as essential. Good training should include appropriate learning within the educational system that provides young people with the skills to meet future challenges. There should also be ongoing training that qualifies workers to use the new information and communication technologies on the labour market. Such training should offer lifelong learning and protect the more fragile sectors from exclusion.

1.5. The EESC supports the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy and of the Strategy for equality between men and women. It supports its flagship initiatives on Innovation Union and the Digital Agenda, together with the measures necessary to achieve synergy between the two in order to move forward in the field of social innovation. It therefore considers it important to integrate these objectives into the National Reform Plans (NRP) and to follow them up in the European Semester. The Committee also considers it essential that, in addition to the social partners, civil society at European, national and regional level be involved in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of activities financed by the European Union to achieve these objectives.

1.6. The EESC calls for social innovation combined with the new technologies on the basis of social networks and collaborative work to enable technical solutions to be implemented that help people with disabilities to integrate better, making it easier for them to achieve maximum autonomy and participation, and enabling them to meet specific challenges and overcome any barriers that might give rise to discrimination.

1.7. The EESC urges the institutions to stimulate capacity-building and the use of essential digital environments and to help create spaces for horizontal, innovative connections to ensure their viable development, so as to put into practice the ‘social innovation + collaborative working + digital communication’ equation and to facilitate and promote quick and secure real-time access.

1.8. The European Union is urged to use its EaSI (Employment and Social Innovation) Programme to finance the framing and implementation of civil society-driven projects that are implemented via social networks and collaborative working, subject to the condition that their aims are geared to the common interest and tap their potential in terms of employability and integration.

1.9. In practice, the European Commission must launch a clear and concrete policy on social innovation and public access to the new technologies, that triggers initiatives bringing shared benefits to the population. This should be line with the European Commission’s Social Investment Package (1). Similarly, investment in human talent must be stepped up and knowledge-based markets must be opened up, promoting cooperation between businesses and citizens.

1.10. Essentially, a package of investments is needed to strengthen social innovation on the basis of technological development, the promotion of collaborative research, implemented jointly and on a multidisciplinary basis, access to new knowledge, and institutional strengthening through the direct democracy made possible by these new network participation and digital communication tools.

2. Introduction

2.1. This opinion sets outs to assess the conditions needed for social innovation to benefit fully from the ICTs, in order to serve the common good, and calls for measures to be taken in favour of digital technology and platforms to promote online relations and the development of synergetic interactions. A study of network structures and how to adjust them to the foundations of organisational culture are among the approaches needed for this purpose.

2.2. The ‘social Innovation + collaborative working + digital communication’ equation raises the question of finding the right processes and tools for these elements in order to efficiently develop the expected results.

2.3. Education (collaborative learning), training (MOOC or Moodle), e-health (health monitoring devices), job creation (e-recruitment), social entrepreneurship, logistics and transport, food and product safety, e-administration and public services (e-voting), economic democracy (crowdfunding, alternative currencies) and social participation are all seen as essential.

2.4. In the current context the significance of social innovation draws support from areas such as research and development, efficiency and sustainability, cohesion and social integration, shared responsibility and public participation, business ethics and corporate social responsibility, and direct democracy and e-administration.

2.5. The EESC (2) would again point to the importance of broadening the scope of the universal electronic telecommunications service to include broadband, focusing not only on geographical exclusion but also on social exclusion, in order to achieve the objectives of narrowing the digital divide and strengthening economic, social and territorial cohesion. The EU must also create the framework conditions for a single big data market and cloud computing, in a way which promotes social innovation.

3. Promoting social innovation in the current digital setting

3.1. Cooperation and digital communication networks play an important role in the field of social innovation. The concept of social innovation is still emerging: the most frequently used definition is that set out in the BEPA report:

‘Social innovations are innovations that are social in both their ends and their means. Specifically, we define social innovations as new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs (more effectively than alternatives) and create new social relationships or collaborations. They are innovations that are not only good for society but also enhance society’s capacity to act’ (3). Thus it is basically viewed from the perspective of the satisfaction of complex, hitherto unsatisfied social needs in the framework of social inclusion and cohesion policies.

3.2. The main components of the social innovation process are: identification of new, unmet or poorly met social needs; development of new solutions in response to these social needs; evaluation of the effectiveness of new solutions in addressing social needs; and dissemination of effective social innovations. In addition, social innovation initiatives are closely linked to a package of social investment measures, investing in individuals with a special focus on life expectancy and preventive care.

3.3. It is important to explore the connection between cooperation processes that information technology and what is known as social innovation offer, and to discuss the predicted benefits for people and society. The main components can be summarised as follows: a) collaborative processes open to participation for anyone who is interested; b) seeking social improvement and change; c) entailing the shared creation of solutions and necessarily cross-cutting proposals; d) as yet untested solutions; e) generating learning, facilitating commitment and leading to changes with a local impact focusing on four aspects: — involvement of local actors guided by the subsidiarity principle; — citizen involvement and commitment; — the specific role of civil society and the social economy; — a bottom-up approach.

3.4. What is new compared to other types of solution is therefore the type of relationship established between the actors involved in developing it, in its design, processes and phases of development; innovation must take account of the place to be given to social partners who are representative and in a position to create contract law.

3.5. As the EESC has already pointed out, a better balance should be struck between economic and social indicators when measuring social progress (4). Using the logic of social progress measurement with a balance between qualitative and quantitative measures offers a medium and long-term perspective, in the context of a balanced, transparent system of governance with clear technical and socioeconomic implementation indicators.

3.6. If we are to seek new solutions to the problems and challenges of present day society, we need to make the most of the creativity and talents of all — across all sectors — in a holistic way; in other words, the overall result must be more than the sum of its parts as well as maximising cost efficiency. This precondition is unarguably best met by collective intelligence and co-creation in collaborative networks.

3.7. Social innovation arises to address unmet needs in society or complex social challenges, touching upon areas and instruments such as: a) areas — enhancing democracy, especially participatory democracy; — social inclusion; — social economy; — collaborative consumption; — open data, open source, open hardware; — wearable technology; — citizens’ awareness platforms; — digital social innovation based on the network effect. b) instruments — reintegrating excluded groups; — boosting sustainable behaviour and lifestyles by increasing awareness of the sustainability impact of consumer choices with respect to energy, the environment and health; — securing the support of public opinion for better decision-making (at personal or institutional level); — increasing confidence in collectively-generated statistics; — using collective awareness of environmental and social situations to drive policy improvements or to create new economic, social and democratic models; — implementing alternative collaborative approaches in problem-solving in order to improve public services, urban environments, democracy and internet on open-data foundations; — connecting people, doing things together, with a view to the requirements of privacy and inclusion; — building a collective awareness of the environmental challenges; — removing collective barriers to inclusion; — experimenting with new collective forms of creativity and cooperation; — enabling citizens to assess corporate social responsibility; — assessing the impact of collective awareness platforms.

3.8. The capacity to share knowledge today could contribute to the emergence of innovations supplementing social policies. Here digital technology can play an important role in supporting social innovators who aim to address the needs of individuals.

3.9. Consequently, obstacles to innovation and social experimentation must be dismantled, so that an innovation-friendly environment and culture can be established, recognising and supporting the specific roles of the different actors (foundations, cooperatives, associations, mutual societies, savings banks, SMEs and other social economy enterprises, etc.) as partners and service providers (5).

4. Collaborative work networks

4.1. Collaborative networks consist of a number of people making an intellectual contribution to a project, with a common group objective. They function as a single brain (‘global brain’), a single organ made up of millions of cells generating ideas, tackling huge challenges such as language or communication. The advent of the internet, combined with other factors, has generated a wide range of joint projects and collaborative networks, but this technological opportunity must be given a purposeful meaning that serves the common good.

4.2. Social innovation can benefit from the use of new digital tools and networks in achieving its objectives more effectively, such as services for elderly people in remote areas, etc.

4.3. Events, decisions, actions and individuals exist in a shared context, a new digital space in which they coincide in real time to generate collective intelligence.

4.4. Collective intelligence is a type of emerging process in which the coordination of many intelligent capacities gives rise to a solution that would be unachievable by individuals working separately. Multiple intelligence thus takes the form of synergetic action by many coordinated talents. It is crucial to build up collective intelligence so that the collective approach becomes creative and processes of innovation and social change can be generated by means of platforms to support these collaborative developments.

4.5. Such collaborative networks achieve their objectives far faster than any finite organised group, regardless of its structure and functioning, can, by seeking talent outside the organisation, leading to open, democratic, distributed, community-led innovation.

4.6. There are two basic conditions for people to share knowledge: symmetric expectations and asymmetric knowledge. Fostering shared expectations and completing diverse knowledge helps to forge cooperation networks.

4.7. However, any type of network for cooperation or collaborative work must face up to three categories of threat: ‘free riding’ (relations are sustained by the fairness of contributions); crowdfunding (6) with ulterior interests; and lastly conspiracy. This latter problem reveals the role of trust in this area of cooperation.

4.8. Networks are built on trust which in turn represents an expectation of the capacity for commitment and response, of the competence of the people with whom we cooperate. Complete and sustained trust generates a stable reputation which protects against network conspiracy. There is no trust without network security that depends on equal law for everyone and on supervision. Security stems from respect for ethics with regard to networks’ declared objectives and operation, and to the conditions for creating and removing networks which must be laid down and declared publicly together with respect for fundamental rights, which must include the right to be forgotten.

4.9. In conclusion, the sequence of the following processes — development of cross-cutting work structures, online interaction and emergence of platforms — leads to creativity and social innovation by means of a heterogeneous model marked by openness, horizontality and distribution, without overlooking the key role of connectors who make it possible to set forth and channel ideas and projects, and to promote these new forms of organising for action.

4.10. Online platforms provide a format which can boost collective intelligence processes that foster a model which is respectful of individual identities. The use of internet was the turning point, on account not only of the democratisation of the communication model, but also of the connectors who are working for an alternative organisational model, based on digital culture.

5. Digital communication as a tool for social innovation through collaborative networks

5.1. Digital communication allows us to visualise public co-responsibility, collective intelligence and collaborative networking, which provide a receptive environment for implementing collaborative economic models based on the common good.

5.2. The EESC has already pointed out (7) that social networks can promote responsible digital citizenship and must ensure that citizens can effectively exercise their rights in the digital environment, such as freedom of expression and information, protection of personal data, privacy, requirements for transparency and decent quality internet services.

5.3. However, the negative aspects of social networks must be taken into consideration and their risks anticipated, at the same time highlighting the opportunities and synergies they offer, in order to foster responsible and intelligent use in a single digital market.

5.4. The European Union must stop being merely a digital user and become a designer and producer of content too, and in order to do this it must promote talent, with a focus on providing information, training and education and ensuring access to the digital society.

5.5. It is important for consumers to receive adequate guidance, especially in areas such as data anonymisation and pseudonymisation, personal data risk analysis and tools and initiatives enhancing consumer awareness, since with these digital tools they can help to better control and secure their data.

Brussels, 16 September 2015. The President of the European Economic and Social Committee Henri MALOSSE

(1) Source: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1044

(2) EESC exploratory opinion, at the request of the French presidency, on High-speed access for all: development of the scope of universal service for electronic communications (OJ C 175, 28.7.2009, p. 8).

(3) Source: http://ec.europa.eu/archives/bepa/pdf/publications_pdf/social_innovation.pdf

(4) EESC opinion on Social impact measurement (OJ C 170, 5.6.2014, p. 18).

(5) EESC opinion on a European Union Programme for Social Change and Innovation (OJ C 143, 22.5.2012, p. 88).

(6) EESC opinion on Unleashing the potential of crowdfunding in the European Union (OJ C 451, 16.12.2014, p. 69).

(7) EESC opinion on Responsible use of social networks (OJ C 351, 15.11.2012, p. 31).