This assignment deserves by nature to be extended to all that the social and solidarity economy can do with digital technology, as a tool at its service, but also for the benefit of its members, with special emphasis on populations that are far from being digital (Young, seniors, people with disabilities, etc.), for reasons of means, culture and knowledge.

Therefore, in the context of this session, emphasis is placed on:

Original tools created by SSE structures, or not, that can be shared, adapted, disseminated or even developed at the international level.

The link to be made by the SSE in the framework of its relationship with local and national public authorities.

The projects that the SSE could tackle without losing sight of the question of meaning and the question of inclusion so that digital technology benefits positively the greatest number.

There is no fatality, for the SSE actors, to suffer the movement of the digital transition that the capitalist world wants to impose, under a term that cannot be more disguised and perverse than that of Collaborative Economy and its cohort of more or less new words: digital platforms, tagging, software, artificial intelligence, intermediation…. The capitalist world has created, from the digital, a kind of new hyper-capitalism that frees itself from national laws, very often mocks labor laws, tax laws, and is valued at incomprehensible levels. For example, Uber, the world’s largest cab company, owns no vehicles and was valued at $50 billion in 2017; Facebook, the largest media owner, publishes no content, Alibaba, the world’s largest retailer has no inventory or stock, and Airbnb, the world’s largest housing provider… owns no real estate, and was valued at $25 billion, outselling Mariott Hotel Group, owner of hotels and employer of thousands of employees.

The world has entered into this crazy logic of hyper-concentration of value in a small number of people, often destroying law-abiding businesses and jobs to create underemployment.

In France, at the time of writing, on April 22, 2022, the Deliveroo trial took place, the first trial in France of “Uberization” whose subject was the legal status of employees of the Deliveroo platform, whose bike or scooter deliverers complained of reprimands, pressure, surveillance. Deliveroo insisted for its part that the deliverers were free not to work on the day of their choice, to refuse an order remembering that it was extra work. The Paris Criminal Court imposed very harsh penalties in economic terms for undercover work, suspended prison sentences for managers, compensation for deliverers who are civil parties, damages and interest to trade union organizations of employees who are civil parties and fines for technical errors. and moral damages for the benefit of URSSAF, an organization that collects social security contributions from employees. URSSAF is also seeking €10 million in social security contributions and dues. The court held that Deliveroo was responsible for the instrumentalization and misuse of labor standards to organize systemic concealment of the deliverer’s work, the managers having built a system that benefits from all the advantages of the employer without having the disadvantages and that Deliveroo falsely presents itself as a platform to connect restaurateurs, customers and deliverers. However, in its own corporate purpose of presenting itself as a food delivery company, and that Deliveroo therefore made its deliverers work illegally as self-employed when they should have had an employment contract. The recognition of this fraud is a big step in the fight for the rights of digital platform workers.

SSE, in its approach to digital, has structures that have both creative and productive capabilities to deal with digital issues, and SSE also has strong strategic thinking, done for several years now and experiences, of more or less large scales and good practices in the digital transition and collaborative economy.

The International Cooperative Alliance highlighted in 2016 the results of the hackathon, GRACE16, a survey conducted among managers, employees, members and customers of 110 cooperative institutions, representative of 18 industries and 47 countries, on cutting-edge products of the subjects’ sharp points that reflect the key areas of the Collaborative, an economy that is increasingly difficult to ignore.

The SSE abounds with initiatives such as the collaborative tools launched by Chinese agricultural cooperatives, the Crosp Hospitals, or the huge market-place of Coop China, platforms with platforms in development such as the Unicorns, for the cooperative BtoC (France), in the AI2L – International Association of Free Software that has created a suite of free software for solidarity financial institutions, as well as a software forge for the SSE.

The “Tech” community, on its side, continues to develop initiatives, Fablabs, often in the form of associations, hackathons, informal online applications in solidarity with migrants (Techfugees), sites such as e-migrants, Refugenious, Reconnect, which created digital safes for the homeless …. This community is made up of both SSE structures and more informal structures that are justifiable in joining the SSE as they share its values and especially its practices.

It is a fundamental challenge for SSE to build and offer visible platforms, based on a Smart Data approach rather than Big Data, platforms that highlight its belonging to the Social and Solidarity Economy, Digital Tools that carry our values and demonstrate our different practices, and also to work closely with the territories on these issues.