Research project AG/JJ/148 (Research action AG)
The EqualityClaim Agora-project aims at bringing a scientific support to the Centre for Equal Opportunity and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR) for implementing a new registration system of individual claims (request of information, reported cases, complaints, advice, etc.) on the basis of all grounds of the anti-discrimination laws .
The project has two main objectives: on the one hand, it aims at integrating all criteria of the anti-discrimination laws in the existing database. On the other hand, it intends to build an effective system of management and analysis of the data and, partially or entirely, make the databank accessible to different users (contact points, national and international institutions, researchers, lawyers, members of Parliament, networks etc.) in order to identify discriminations more efficiently in the Belgian society.
The EqualityClaim project puts the focus on three major aspects: the development of a new system of management and analysis of the database, the communication and exchange of information between the Centre’s services and the fifty’ contact points, and the external users' access to anonymized data.
The first part of the project will provide a state of the art on anti-discrimination databases existing in Europe in order to compare the Belgian system and make the adaptations required by the international standards in this matter. The project envisages examining the recent changes of the anti-discrimination legislation in Europe at the light of the protection of the private life. This part also includes the organisation of an international seminar in order to help the Centre for Equal Opportunity and Opposition to Racism to collect, design and manage the registration of complaints.
The second part of the project involves giving a support to the Centre for the implementation of the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and analysis system that a contractor will supply in May 2009. This technical support will concern the day-to-day using of the database system, the data input form for individual anti-discrimination complaints, and the improvement of the registration system according to the needs of the users.
The third part of the project is related to the users’ access to the database of the Centre. The internal users, such as the Centre services and the local contact points, should both feed and receive access to the Centre’s database. This concerns for example associations, trade unions, centres of integration, social inspection, Belgian Institute for Equality between Women and Men, etc., who register and transmit cases to the Centre. The external users are research institutions, international organisations, members of Parliament, lawyers, magistrates, etc. who need information on anti-discrimination. On the basis of the Privacy Act, the conditions for access to the anonymized data will be examined and a plan of usage of data by external users will be proposed.
The fourth part of the project is devoted to the production and the dissemination of the project's results to institutions and to a broader public likely to be interested in anti-discrimination data a well as in the improvement of their own registration systems for discrimination.
