Human rights in the digital era: Learnings on local governance from pilots in Europe

Digital technologies are increasingly becoming more important in all areas of society. In urban environments, services provided to residents such as garbage collection, the provision of playgrounds, parking spaces, streetlights, affordable housing, social support, and public transport all require a local government that is committed to facilitating good quality of life in the city. As these municipal services become automated with the help of digital technologies, it becomes essential to ensure that they truly serve a community in ways that align with core values such as inclusion, trust, transparency and equity.

Over the last years, cities have increased their efforts to lead people-centered digital transformation to support sustainable urbanisation and promote human rights in the digital era. The Digital Rights Governance Project in Europe aimed at supporting cities to develop capacity and engage people to mainstream this human rights-based approach, by providing both normative and practical guidance to ensure that the human rights mechanisms that are in place offline are also in place online. The report summarises learnings from the project and pilots in the City of Brussels, Dublin, Tirana and Sofia and tools to operationalise the guidance in cities.

You can discover more about the journeys of Tirana, Sofia, Brussels, and Dublin in the Digital Rights Governance Project. The document “Human Rights in the Digital Era: Learnings on Local Governance from Pilots in Europe” offers a comprehensive overview of similar pilots conducted across the continent, each presenting unique insights and approaches to digital governance. 

Tirana: Strengthening public sector capacities to promote and protect human rights online 

Tirana is the largest city and the capital of Albania, with a population of 912,190 inhabitants. The city envisions becoming a digital start-up hub due to a young, multilingual population that is looking for self-employment and low capital requirements to set up businesses. To serve this vision, Tirana’s Municipality has been working to enhance public service delivery through technology and innovation by developing community-based solutions, referring to apps and platforms designed to help citizens and the community in their daily lives in terms of local digital public services. Among these initiatives, we can mention: the Bibliotech initiative, which aims to transform public libraries into technological centres to increase citizens’ digital literacy; Friendly Wi-Fi Albania, a national security certification standard for public Wi-Fi that allows the access of filtered non-abusive content for citizens of Tirana public sport; and Digital Tirana, a public-private partnership to increase support to start-ups, entrepreneurs, ecosystem actors as well as provide comprehensive information on digital nomads.

Tirana’s Municipality also developed internal-based innovations, which are platforms and systems created by the ICT Department to increase the Municipality’s staff performance and municipal processes through systems for asset management, financial management, performance evaluation, access control, document sharing and e-learning. Over the past 7 years, the municipality has increased their investments in digital infrastructure and the digitalization of approximately 170 public services. 

However, a lot of challenges and barriers remain to provide a fair and complete digitalisation of the city. Albanian citizens are less tech-savvy and not sufficiently aware of data privacy rules and of e-governance services’ use. The lack of trust between citizens and public administration was also coupled, at the time of the open call, with the need to build transparency and accountability of public sector officials and to develop strategies to protect human rights in this rapid digitalization process. Indeed, the city of Tirana is facing challenges related to the lack of awareness of digital rights among its staff, and the municipality also wanted to identify priorities and actions to make human digital rights a reality.

Selected through an open call that attracted 11 applications from across Europe, the City of Tirana, alongside Dublin, Sofia, and Brussels, was one of the cities chosen to participate in the pilot phase of the Digital Rights Governance Project. This project, a collaborative effort implemented by UN-Habitat, the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, Eurocities, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), and funded by the Open Society Foundations, was designed with a clear mission: to support local governments in integrating a human rights-based approach into the digitalization of their services. Each city was selected according to its unique commitment to protecting and implementing digital rights at the city level and its project’s ability to be scaled up and adapted for wider application. 

Like Tirana, other cities have increased their efforts to lead a people-centred digital transformation to support sustainable urbanisation and promote human rights in the digital era. Cities have also increased collaboration by joining the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights (CC4DR), a network that brings together over 60 cities worldwide which are committed to promoting and defending the digital human rights of citizens, residents and visitors in cities, to ensure fair, inclusive, accessible, affordable and non-discriminatory digital environments.

CC4DR actively participated in The Digital Rights Governance Project in Europe aimed at supporting cities to develop capacity and engage people to mainstream this human rights-based approach, by providing both normative and practical guidance to ensure that the human rights mechanisms that are in place offline are also in place online. To increase local capacities to lead people-centred digital transformation strategies, policies and projects, the pilot worked with the cities of Brussels, Dublin, Sofia and Tirana to address some of their digital rights challenges. The report “Human Rights in The Digital Era” summarises all the learnings from the project and tools to operationalise the guidance in cities. 

The pilot in Tirana aimed at building public staff’s capacity for transparency and accountability while also developing a digital rights agenda for the city. This pilot is aligned with the “Guide for Mainstreaming Human Rights in the Digital Transformation of Cities” developed as part of the project. Specifically, Tirana aimed to work on strengthening its structures through building skills and organising training in digital human rights and digital transformation.

First, a survey was developed for public sector officials from Tirana’s Municipality to understand their knowledge on the topic of digital rights and the areas and methods they preferred for a future training program. 102 answers were provided by public officials working for a wide range of different departments’ municipalities. The survey showed that raising awareness and building capacities on digital human rights was necessary. Indeed, most of the respondents were involved in the development or implementation of digital solutions for the city. However, their knowledge of digital human rights was mostly general or basic and none of the survey respondents had training on data protection or on the importance of ensuring the protection of human rights in the digital sphere.

The survey also showed that public officials are mainly concerned about cyber-attacks and cybercrime such as theft or abuse of personal data, ransomware (malicious software) or phishing. They highlight the importance of the safety and well-being of children. They also pointed to the use of personal data and information by companies or public administrations and the lack of privacy due to increased surveillance efforts. Finally, they were concerned about the difficulty some people have in accessing the online world (e.g., persons with disabilities, elderly people, and those living in areas with little or no internet access).

Lastly, interviews were conducted with five general directors from the municipality. All directors agreed on the need to raise awareness about digital rights among public officials and in general. Among the common proposals for the workshops, the directors highlighted the necessity to identify key people from each department for initial training, and who will oversee adapting it to the specific requirements of their department. They mentioned that hybrid format workshops, combined with supporting materials, and mid to long-term planning were necessary for successful capacity building.

Tirana’s Capacity Building Programme on Digital Rights was piloted during January and March 2023. The objective of the program was to increase the knowledge of the different areas of digital human rights among public officials at the Municipality of Tirana. It aims to not only introduce these topics in a theoretical manner but also to connect them with the specific challenges that different departments of the municipality face. For the delivery of specific modules of the program and given the relevance that public staff gave to data governance topics, they partnered with MyData and the Open Data Charter.

The audience of this pilot program were public officials of the Municipality of Tirana who participated in the survey scoping the needs for digital rights training as well as general directors who were interviewed about the program. Overall, 100+ public staff were assessed during the pilot and 47 public sector officials working across more than 20 departments of the municipality attended the workshops. As a result, 23 participants complied with the certification criteria.

The capacity building program demonstrated the need to train public sector officials in human rights and digital transformation to create awareness on the topic and how digital human rights themes interact with public sector duties and projects. The sessions focused on the challenges and opportunities for upholding human rights in digital services, and which knowledge gaps needed to be addressed to protect and promote digital rights. Tirana’s pilot focused on strengthening Mechanism 5 of the Guide: “Build skills and organise training in human rights and digital transformation”.

In terms of lessons learned from this pilot implementation, one of the main learnings is the need to deliver this session with support in the local language to build a safe space for discussions and knowledge sharing. Given that each session had a space for discussions, the team had learned that connecting the themes with the current work and duties of the public officials was important; further iterations of this capacity-building program should include a final assignment to implement the learnings pragmatically in a project of the municipality. Finally, this program could be scaled up by implementing a hybrid format and a “train the trainer” module for specific digital rights champions to deliver the program.

The pilot project in Tirana demonstrated the need to expand local capacities to lead human rights based on digital transformation and to increase the capabilities of public servants to manage inclusive and responsible use of technologies. This capacity-building program is a first step towards co-defining a digital human rights agenda in Tirana by adopting a “whole-of-a-government” approach to human rights and digital technologies, promoting residents’ participation and partnerships with the existing local ecosystem.

Sofia: Human Rights in the Digital Era – developing a roadmap to mainstream digital human rights in existing policies and strategies 

Sofia is the capital of Bulgaria and the 14th largest capital in Europe with a population of 1,549,465 million inhabitants. The city is rapidly becoming an innovative, tech, green and entrepreneurial hub. Digital and sustainable transformation is at the core of Sofia’s development. The protection and encouragement of human rights in the digital environment is an indispensable part of this process, and the City of Sofia has committed to putting citizen participation, confidentiality, security, and protection of personal data, as well as data transparency, accountability and non-discrimination in the centre of all processes to promote democratic participation and inclusion for all. 

In 2020, in line with its long-term commitment to digital transformation and sustainability, Sofia Municipality established the “Digitalisation, Innovation and Economic Development” department headed by a Deputy Mayor. Innovative Sofia aims to support the development of Sofia as an intelligent, digital, innovative and tech city, to encourage digital rights development and protection, and to contribute to and facilitate the increasing quality of life for all citizens.

Innovative Sofia, alongside EU experts and over 100 local stakeholders, developed the Digital Transformation Strategy for Sofia (DTSS) and the Action Plan for its implementation under the Digital Cities Challenge (DCC) project of the European Commission, to encourage Sofia’s innovative, digital, and sustainable transformation and the adoption of new human-centred digital services and smart solutions.

As Sofia, more cities have intensified their efforts to spearhead a digital transformation centred around people, advocating for sustainable urbanisation, and championing human rights in the digital age. One notable initiative contributing to this endeavour is the CC4DR. Participating actively in The Digital Rights Governance Project in Europe, CC4DR focused on assisting cities in enhancing their capabilities and involving their communities in adopting a human rights-based approach. The project provides both theoretical and practical guidance, aiming to establish online mechanisms that mirror the human rights safeguards already in place offline.

Alongside Sofia, the pilot initiative collaborated with the cities of Brussels, Dublin and Tirana to bolster local capacities in steering strategies, policies, and projects for people-centric digital transformation. The comprehensive insights and tools gathered from this collaborative effort are encapsulated in the report titled “Human Rights in The Digital Era”, offering a summary of the project’s findings and practical guidance for implementing these principles in cities.

The pilot in Sofia aimed at expanding its capacities, developing new human-centred services, and raising awareness about the importance of digital transformation and human rights in the digital environment. Sofia aimed to develop an assessment methodology to assess gaps and expand digital rights awareness. As a result of this pilot phase, 27 stakeholders participated in the roundtable and 10 organisations engaged through the consultation.

As part of the pilot phase, a self-assessment tool was applied to evaluate the maturity of the digital rights agenda in Sofia and to draft a set of recommendations to strengthen and sustain these actions. The self-assessment is a simple and practical tool to support the implementation of the Guide and is meant to provide a quick scan of all the areas within the municipality connected with digital human rights, to assess gaps and to provide recommendations on how to address them. Sofia was the first city to test the assessment and provide insights to improve the prototype. The project presented a summary of the gaps identified along with recommended options for building an action plan. The aim was to provide a comprehensive menu of possible avenues of action for Sofia.

Based on the self-assessment recommendations, the Innovative Sofia team discussed and prioritised a series of actions to be implemented in the short and medium term. These recommendations were presented to Sofia’s local ecosystem in a roundtable held at the end of April. The session aimed to review and validate the results and recommendations from the self-assessment tool and co-design an actionable roadmap document based on their insights. This document was also open for feedback and the team is addressing comments to include the recommendations in the digital rights political declaration for Sofia.

At the beginning of the pilot phase, the project and Innovative Sofia teams analysed the three options to set principles and commitments on digital human rights, opting for establishing a political declaration on digital rights, based on the recommendations of the assessment, feedback from the local ecosystem, existing policies in Sofia and the Guide developed by the project team. This option was considered more feasible in the short term by the local government. 

The draft version of the Digital Rights Principles for Sofia was presented to the local ecosystem during the pilot roundtable. They are based on the principles of the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, UN-Habitat’s People-Centred Smart Cities pillars and existing policies of the Municipality like the Digital Transformation Strategy for the City of Sofia. Principles include: (1) Autonomy, freedom and self-determination; (2) Digital literacy, equity and inclusion; (3) Transparency and accountability; (4) Public participation and engagement; (5) Privacy, security and protection; and (6) Open and ethical public goods and services.

This pilot was particularly insightful on how to develop core values based on a bottom-up and needs-based approach. In this regard, the self-assessment tool implementation helped identify existing gaps and find ways to address them through an action plan to protect and promote human rights online and offline that is rooted in the needs, capacities, and existing policies of the municipality.

Sofia’s pilot was critical to learning how to set up a foundation with commitments to human rights in the digital context of a city. Many recommendations and commitments from this pilot will also strengthen existing structures within the city of Sofia. For instance, this pilot will also tap into Mechanism 1 of the Guide: “Formalise the city’s commitments to human rights”. The design and implementation of the self-assessment tool worked on Mechanism 13 of the Guide: “Establish an annual reporting mechanism on human rights related to digital technologies”.

As the Deputy Mayor for digitalization, innovation, and economic development, Mr. Kerezov, pointed out during the roundtable, this political declaration will set the principles and actions to inform residents on the human rights they need to promote and protect in online contexts and will be complementary to the DTSS, which is the main roadmap for the digital transformation in Sofia. Being this declaration the first of its kind in Sofia and Bulgaria, it will allow the development of initiatives and the introduction of new policies and regulations at the national level.

The City of Brussels: Setting Foundations on Digital Human Rights

The City of Brussels is the capital of the Kingdom of Belgium and is considered the capital of the European Union, with a population of 188,737 inhabitants. The City of Brussels strongly believes that building a smart and sustainable city should involve all citizens and city players and delivering digital tools and innovation can help to build a more supportive, dynamic, and inclusive society. 

To develop a smart, sustainable and inclusive city, the City of Brussels has recently defined a Smart City Strategy, a Data Strategy and a Digital Transformation programme (called BXL2021) which is implementing several programmes and initiatives to foster a human-centric approach to digital transformation. As the City of Brussels is in the middle of an important digital transformation and is setting new ambitions in terms of smart city and data governance, the city needs to make sure that the right mechanisms and structures are foreseen to protect digital rights and reduce the digital divide.

Through the pilot, the City of Brussels aimed to define a clear action plan to promote digital inclusion and define core areas for the protection and promotion of human rights in digital contexts. At the time of the open call, the City of Brussels needed support to plan its actions to fight the digital divide, and to include them in a clear action plan, to promote digital inclusion and define core areas for the protection of digital rights. 

In collaboration with the Smart City Unit of the City of Brussels, the design phase started by hosting a workshop in late August 2022 to gather insights on the challenge and analyse opportunities and assumptions behind the problem. This workshop provided an opportunity to analyse the needs and assumptions behind the challenge, leading to new insights to define the pilot. During the workshop, the participants identified a series of barriers to addressing the challenge, including formalising commitments to digital rights with a clear vision and action plan to uphold digital human rights and sponsorship; understanding the digital divide at the city level; fostering multi-stakeholder engagement to raise awareness and strengthening public capacities. As a result of this pilot project, 27 workshops, meetings and roundtables were held, 57 people were involved in the consultation process, 6 civil society organisations and 17 citizens engaged in consultations.

The City expressed their need to develop an official set of principles to serve as the basis for future actions at the municipal level regarding digital rights in the City of Brussels. Hence, a document with the City of Brussels’ Digital Rights Policy was drafted to establish the City of Brussels’ digital rights commitments and lay out the actions the City of Brussels is committed to. This draft started with preliminary research on the existing policies at the local, regional, and national levels that are relevant to digital rights.

The draft included a set of principles based on the EU Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade, the principles of the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, the Declaration on joining forces to boost sustainable digital transformation in cities and communities in the EU, the UN-Habitat’s people-centred smart cities pillars, as well as existing political roadmaps of the City of Brussels, such as the Citizen Participation Charter, the IT Masterplan and the 2018-2024 Majority Agreement of the City of Brussels. For the drafting of actions, the City of Brussels conducted a mapping of existing initiatives at the local level and looked for synergies with the regional and federal actions.

As a complement to the document that drafts the City’s Digital Rights 2030 vision and commitments to uphold human rights, the City of Brussels assessed the local digital divide on its territory, conducted by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). This process entailed analysing existing databases and interviewing field actors and experts to map the gaps and identify who is the most affected by the digital divide in the city. This study provided key insights and a list of priority actions as an output of the analysis to be included in the document. A communication campaign will also inform all residents and digital rights actors (e.g. digital inclusion organisations, social workers, etc.) about the existing and future efforts to promote and protect digital rights in the city’s territory.

Through existing and planned initiatives in areas such as digital inclusion, accessibility, and procurement, among others, the City of Brussels will use all reasonable endeavours to meet the commitments listed in this document and to implement the associated actions by 2030. In terms of governance of the policy, the commitments and the action plan will be reviewed yearly by organising meetings with stakeholders involved in the design and implementation of the plan. This action plan will be a living document and updated gradually based on political priorities and new initiatives.

The City of Brussels was the first pilot city to work on setting up a Foundation with local core values and commitments to digital human rights and affirming them at the political level. The City of Brussels Digital Rights Policy also included actions to strengthen Structures mentioned in the Guide, focusing on Mechanism 3: “Mainstream human rights and digitalisation in all policy areas and processes of the city administration”, Mechanism 6: “Organise and promote the participation of people in the decision-making process of the city”, Mechanism 11: “Build a repository of human rights impact assessments for new projects” and Mechanism 12: “Apply a human rights lens to procurement and funding of digital solutions”. 

This pilot was also insightful in understanding how to engage with local stakeholders and communities affected by the digital divide and how to connect local values with existing international frameworks. Another key learning from this pilot was the need to host meaningful engagements with internal stakeholders working across different topics of the digital human rights agenda in the city, and having their views and initiatives reflected in the early drafts of the document. This contributes to strengthening a whole-of-government approach and the development of commitments based on existing needs and capacities. 

To assess the digital divide and promote digital inclusion, it is important to have a fundamental awareness and understanding of the digital divide and how it affects specific community groups. It is extremely relevant that the City of Brussels has initiated the collection of information through a series of roundtables to consult with residents about connectivity, digital skills, and literacy so that the input and feedback from residents can complement the contributions of experts and public employees for the policy document to properly represent their views and needs.

Dublin: Increasing awareness among local authorities, youth and residents on the ethical and privacy implications of technologies in the public sphere 

Dublin is the capital of the Republic of Ireland with a population of 1,458,154 inhabitants including 592,713 inhabitants in Dublin City Council’s Administrative Area. Through the Smart Dublin program, Dublin City Council is addressing local challenges by introducing new and emerging technologies. Smart Dublin is an initiative of the four Dublin Local Authorities (Dublin City Council, Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, Fingal County Council and South Dublin County Council) that uses new technologies to improve services and enhance quality of life in Dublin. On behalf of the four Dublin Local Authorities, Smart Dublin endorsed the principles of the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights to promote and uphold Dublin’s residents’ human rights in digital contexts.

The project of Dublin aimed to prototype and develop a foundational educational module on digital rights for public officials and youth, to promote the principles of ethics and privacy with regards to new and emerging technologies. The outcomes from Dublin’s pilot described below, will not only contribute to the city’s advancements in building a digital governance on trust with communities but also offer valuable lessons and strategies that can be leveraged by other cities within the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights and beyond, to keep ethics, openness, and transparency at the centre of digital transformation. 

Over the past few years, Dublin City Council has delivered a range of cutting-edge technology projects aimed at promoting inclusive digital governance in the city such as Wifi4EU to promote free access to the internet in public spaces, drones, and 5G, among other new and emerging technologies. 

The Dublin pilot project is focused on strengthening their structures by focusing on Mechanism 5 of the Guide on Mainstreaming Human Rights in the Digital Transformation of Cities: “Build skills and organise training in human rights and digital transformation”. As established in the Guide, upholding human rights principles through training for municipal staff can raise awareness and commitment toward human rights in digital projects and services. This pilot is also contributing to Mechanisms 6: “Organise and promote the participation of people in the decision-making process of the City” and 12: “Apply a human rights lens to procurement and funding of digital solutions”. To address this challenge, Dublin City Council developed three learning modules on digital rights for local authorities, youth, and residents. 

The first module, “Digital Rights Workshop: Ethics and Data Privacy Local Authority Learning Module” focused on increasing capacities to make better decisions regarding technology solutions from the outset of a digital project and promote conscious choices on the impact of technologies in the public realm. After an introduction to digital human rights, workshop activities included understanding unconscious bias, assessing intended and unintended consequences of technology using a delivery robots case study and policy implications for regulating (or not) the use of such technologies in public spaces. Participants also had the chance to collaborate with colleagues across different departments, share ideas and discuss how this topic relates to their daily work. 

The second module, dedicated to youth learning, raised awareness on developing critical thinking skills around ethics and privacy in a smart city, the implications of technologies and how they are impacting youth’s daily lives in cities. Through a participative and dynamic session, the students gave insights and recommendations on how to protect human rights in digital contexts on three core themes: surveillance technology in the public realm, privacy, and tech for social good.

The third module aimed at giving a voice to communities and understanding public concerns about technologies, trade-offs between privacy and public purpose and how they shape residents’ daily lives. The workshop was open to the community, and participants included residents of the Docklands area, researchers and people interested in digital human rights. This session was divided into three main parts: (1) Individual perceptions of privacy and digital rights; (2) Digital rights in our daily lives, including digital rights in public spaces; (3) Values, trues and trade-offs in digital rights, which explored participant’s perceptions on justifiable benefits for sharing personal data and trust in organisations. 

As a result of the pilot project, 21 staff from Dublin City Council attended the local authority’s module, 22 students were engaged through the youth learning module and 11 community members engaged through the community workshop.

During the pilot, the city conducted research on existing digital rights frameworks and strategies from cities globally. Dublin’s team was interested in understanding how other cities are implementing digital rights principles, what are the best strategies, who oversees enforcing and monitoring these frameworks and which were the main outcomes and learnings. The local team also mapped the digital rights context in the city focusing on existing legal and regulatory frameworks and digitalisation strategies within the City Council and in Ireland (e.g.: Digital Ireland Framework, data protection frameworks such as GDPR, etc.). 

In this mapping exercise, Dublin’s team highlighted the “Public Sector Human Rights and Equality Duty”, a mandate that is set out in Section 42 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act from 2014. The Dublin City Council’s Equality Office in collaboration with other departments has developed a framework, “Strategy and Action Plan” that details the values and sets out their high-level goals, objectives and actions, such as dignity and respect; diversity and accessibility; inclusion and social justice; participation and engagement; choice and autonomy. These were included in the local authorities’ workshop discussions and are core values aligned with the Guide that can ensure long-term sustainability.