POSSIBLE DIGITAL DIVIDE THREAT IN ACCESS TO PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SERVICES AMONG ELDERLY AS A FACTOR UNDERLYING INTERNET SKILLS POPULARIZATION NEED

Public administration is one of the important partners in life of each citizen. Therefore quality and friendliness of means of contact and doing administrative procedures is important and may influence people’s quality of life.

In recent years, due to the Internet services expansion, many of the administrative procedures had been transferred into digital domain replacing the traditional means of communication. This is commonly positively perceived, as e-channel is accessible from any place 24/7 and therefore regarded to be effective and comfortable. However, population in Poland, just as in the whole Europe, is ageing rapidly. And elderly tend to experience difficulties in online services usage. They arise from physiological background as well as from their smaller novelty and technological eagerness. Together with earlier mentioned switch to e-services in public administration it may bring pressure towards digital divide and exclusion of elderly.

This paper aims to present literature review on all above mentioned background factors together with research outcomes on user-friendliness of Polish websites of public administration. As a vivid solution seems to be popularization of the Internet skills, which have to be correlated with needs of elderly users and attractively presented, possibly with use of gamification techniques.