Digital Transformation and Social Well-Being: Promoting an Inclusive Society

This is the first book to show how digitalisation and the better provision of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can improve access to a wide-range of social services, as well as make them more inclusive. Overcoming disparities across social groups using contemporary digitalisation models will have lasting consequences on social well-being and human welfare.

Reflecting on current trends the authors vividly illustrate the collective, global nature of the challenge that digitalisation represents for providers, administrators and users of welfare services. It is important, therefore, to bear in mind the following for research design and practice:

• Citizens’ rights must be protected
• Consideration should be given to how the services provided can be improved by more effective use of ICTs
• Digital interventions require better service coordination in the setting of priorities and specific training in digital skills for service providers and service users

The chapters in this book address these problems and challenges in great depth, analysing the role of ICTs in promoting social inclusion and social welfare, drawing on examples of successful ICT applications around the world. The book contains country case-studies from the United States, Brazil, India, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong (China), Zimbabwe, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Singapore and will be of interest to all scholars and students of social policy, to social work educators, and social care providers.

Antonio López Peláez is Professor of Social Work and Social Services at the National University of Distance Education (UNED, Spain, ) and the International Council on Social Welfare Executive Director (since November 2020). He has held key leadership positions at UNED as Head of the Office of the Rector, director of the UNED’s Segovia campus, director of the Master’s Degree in Social Work, Welfare State, and Social Intervention Methods at the Law Faculty of the UNED and is spokesman for faculty members before the Academic Senate of the UNED. In the last 20 years, he has published extensively in scientific journals. He is co-editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Digital Social Work.

Sang-Mok Suh is the Global President of the International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW), as well as president of the Korea National Council on Social Welfare, the representative body of the private social welfare sector in the Republic of Korea. During his career he served as member of the Korean National Assembly, Minister of Health and Welfare of his country as well as a high-level advisory board member to the United Nations Secretary General on Sustainable Development. Dr. Suh has written widely in the socio-economic field and is the author of many articles and several books on the Korean economy.

Sergei Zelenev is the Special Representative of the International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW) to the United Nations (UN) in New York. Until May 2019 he served as Executive Director of the ICSW. Before assuming his position at the ICSW in 2012, Dr. Zelenev worked for almost three decades for the UN, both at headquarters in New York in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA), and in the field, in Africa (twice) and in the Caribbean. He has written widely in the areas of socio-economic policy, ageing, youth and intergenerational relationships and directed numerous UN studies on key policy issues.