The digital safe is a secure online service that allows people to keep their administrative and/or personal documents (ID card, driver's license, contracts, bills, statements, photos, etc.) and to access them via the Internet. The user chooses the nature of the documents he or she wishes to keep in this personal space.
The General Directorate for Social Cohesion (DGCS) and the National Union of Communal and Intercommunal Social Action Centers (UNCCAS) launched an experiment in July 2016 to evaluate the use and usefulness of the digital safe, both with the people supported but also with CCAS agents in the context of their missions.
This experiment was implemented in 16 social aid centers: it aimed to understand under what conditions the digital safe could facilitate access to rights and social support for the people concerned by fighting against the loss of their documents, and to what extent it could also be an effective tool for fighting against the digital divide.
- Five digital safe solution providers volunteered to participate in this experiment.
- More than 200 agents concerned had been trained and made aware of the digital safe
- In one year, nearly 3,000 people were offered a digital safe (of which 1,000 were actually opened).
A useful tool but limited in its uses
The experiment shows that "the uses of the digital safe are still quite limited among the CCAS public who have opened one. Nevertheless, when they are used, people mainly use the document filing features, and also carry out administrative procedures, thanks to the printing and sharing of documents already stored. The agents, on the other hand, are more familiar with the tool but rarely use it, as they use it in parallel with the people they accompany.The main use is also the most predictable: the storage of documents. Among the documents stored, it is most often a copy of the national identity card or passport as well as a copy of the Vitale card. Other documents stored include a copy of the driver's license, tax notices, pay slips, various certificates (Social Security, Pôle Emploi, CAF, etc.), accommodation certificates, bank statements, etc. But some people also use it "for personal documents, family archives": 25% of respondents indicated "to deposit personal documents".
When the digital safe is used to carry out administrative procedures, it is mainly used to retrieve digitized supporting documents, without having to search for documents in paper format and without having to identify oneself on the sites of the main institutions.
Other uses of the digital safe include retrieving documents filed by the CCAS and filing documents for the CCAS
Uses that vary depending on the audience's " relationship with the administration" or their familiarity with digital technology
The results of the experiment show a strong consensus on the usefulness of keeping documents, both from the people concerned and from the CCAS agents.The vast majority of those concerned indicate that document storage is "useful": one person out of two even thinks that it is "very useful". In the case of the CCAS, more than 6 out of 10 agents consider document storage to be "very useful".
The usefulness of the digital safe also varies depending on the audience. For example, 1 agent out of 2 thinks that the digital safe is "very useful" for people who are domiciled and regularly accompanied. The usefulness seems to be less marked for the elderly and young people aged 18 to 25.
Beyond these broad categories of target audiences, the usefulness of a digital safe for an individual also depends on other parameters, such as the "relationship with the administration" or the ease of use of digital technology.
On the agent side, the usefulness of the digital safe in their daily work lives is primarily related to the ability to use it to:
- Verify a person's identity when they cannot prove it (forgotten, lost or stolen ID), which allows the person to access their service or mail, and the agent to be able to do their job in a calmer climate.
- Sharing a document with an accompanied person, which can save time (the agent does not have to wait for the person to come back with the missing document), fluidity and security (it avoids the use of emails).
- Share a document with an associative or institutional partner. The usefulness of the digital safe is strongly presumed for this use, but it has not been possible to test it because of the necessary involvement of the partners themselves. However, the expectations of the CCAS are high: the possibility that the digital safe will facilitate relations between the CCAS and their institutional partners is often one of the main reasons for their involvement in this experimentation.
Facilitate the use of the digital safe in the access and maintenance of rights process
At the end of this experiment, the DGCS and UNCASS made a series of recommendations:- Improve public reception areas by providing access to computer equipment in institutions and associations where the digital safe can be used:
- Promote interoperability between digital safes and the dematerialized personal spaces of Social Security organizations:
- Set up a "Solidarity Digital Safe" label:
- Secure the status of the people who accompany those in precarious situations when opening and using the digital safe:
- To finance training courses on the use of digital technology for people in precarious situations:
- To finance and support the structures accompanying the people in situation of precariousness to the use of the digital:
- Build sustainable national perspectives on digital inclusion to support the deployment of digital safes
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