Today it is becoming more common for the government and municipalities to use digitalization when they implement new systems for the citizens to use. This is to be more efficient and save more money on the different processes, but also to make the communication between the government, municipalities and the citizens faster and safer.
In Denmark this development has spread widely over the last ten years, and today every citizen above the age of 15 has a mandatory Digital Mailbox (e-Boks). Being mandatory means every citizen in Denmark has to use it, and therefor had to learn about this new digital system. This included learning about the change from ordinary physical mail to digital mail. This change has been hard for the elderly, as they are not as used to digital communication as the younger generations. However studies show, that young people between 15 and 25 years of age, also struggles with the use of this digital communication system.
This thesis focuses on the struggle for the younger generation and how these young people can be helped in order to be more motivated and self-confident when using e-Boks. To explore these problems, it was essential to get in touch with these young people, to learn about their feelings towards and opinions of e-Boks. For the purpose of this thesis, we have been in touch with three Productionschools in the northern part of Jutland, where three focusgroupinterviews were held. Furthermore we have sent out questionnaires to students at all Productionschools, along with their teachers and students at schools for 15-18 year olds in the northern part of Jutland. This was done to clarify some of the more important questions about the young digital users and to get an overall view of their opinions on e-Boks and how they use it.
We have also been in touch with the Danish Agency of Digitization, to get their point of view and to uncover some of our questions about e-Boks and the young people. All of these investigations show a wide range of answers, when it comes to how they use e-Boks, and how they learn the functions of it. But some of the problems the young people have, in both the Productionschools and at other educational institutions, are the keycard they have to use as a safety login to e-Boks. Many students think this keycard is too troublesome to use, and that it takes a lot of time for them to log on. For the students in the focusgroupinterviews there have been a dislike towards the general use of e-Boks, but also a lack of knowledge in regards to learning about the digital system. These issues, including a lack of motivation in the use of e-Boks, are some of the problems, which the Danish agency of Digitizations is facing. To help the young people in their everyday use of e-Boks, we have come to the conclusion that they need a digital tool they can consult, when they seek information and want to learn more about e-Boks and the many features it offers. Additionally, the questionnaires to the educators and the preliminary contact with the Productionschools show, that there is an interest in educating the students in the use of e-Boks. A thing that the students in the focusgroupinterviews also point out as a huge lack in their education of e-Boks. Therefore it may be a solution in the future, to develop educational material about e-Boks, which the educators can use during these lectures in middle school.