e-Albania: A Digital-by-Default Portal That Left Elderly, Disabled and Roma Citizens Behind

Since launching roughly a decade ago, Albania's e-Albania portal has digitised the large majority of public administration: around 95% of applications for 1,237 public services are now processed online, and physical contact centres that used to handle walk-in requests have been closed. The National Agency for Information Society (AKSHI) reports that 13% of e-Albania's users are aged over 62, which it presents as evidence that older citizens' use of the portal has grown.
Independent evidence tells a more complicated story. A 2025 investigation by BIRN (Balkan Investigative Reporting Network) found pensioners in rural areas such as Devoll and Elbasan who say they cannot use the portal at all and must rely on neighbours or strangers to retrieve documents as sensitive as pension records or university results. Albania's Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) data cited in the investigation shows 6.7% of citizens over 65 have been unable to access the portal, in a country where 31.6% of the population (roughly 473,000 people out of 2.4 million, per the 2023 census) is over 65. A third of surveyed users rated their experience with the portal as 'not very easy' or 'not at all easy'.
The European Commission's 2023 Albania progress report (SWD(2023) 690 final) formally flagged that closing front-office contact centres 'raised concerns over access to services to vulnerable and digitally less-apt citizens' and called for the reinstatement of some in-person channels alongside efforts 'to improve the user experience of the portal online'. A 2024 UNDP assessment of municipal e-readiness went further, concluding that access for vulnerable groups — especially the elderly and people with disabilities — 'remains a significant challenge', and that none of the municipalities it assessed had implemented website features tailored to people with limited digital skills or disabilities. Roma-focused NGOs interviewed by BIRN, including Rromano Kham, report that the only support available is project-based and lapses once donor funding ends.
e-Albania is a cautionary case for any government pursuing digital-by-default public services: high reach and heavy investment in digitisation are not the same as inclusive design, and removing physical fallback channels before accessible digital alternatives are in place can leave exactly the citizens most dependent on public services — pensioners, people with disabilities, rural and Roma communities — worse off, not better.

Read the full analysis: https://e-albania.al