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. This 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.