All the digital delays of the EU. Report
According to a report by Public First (and commissioned by Amazon), the European Union will reach its digital targets for 2030 with a ten-year delay. All the details
According to a report by the consultancy Public First commissioned by Amazon Web Services , a company of the Amazon group that deals with the cloud, the European Union risks reaching the objectives of the Digital Decade plan with a ten-year delay. Unless national governments focus more on spreading digital skills among populations.
WHAT IS DIGITAL DECADE
Digital Decade is the European Commission's program for the digital transition: it was presented in 2021 and expects that, by 2030, 80 percent of the population of the Union will acquire basic digital skills, that 5G connectivity is available everywhere, that public services are made fully available online and that 75 per cent of European companies use cloud services for data management.
DELAY AND GENERABLE ECONOMIC VALUE
According to the Public First report, however, these targets will only be reached in 2040, ten years later. The document states that the European Union will be able to generate, thanks to Digital Decade, economic value of 1.3 trillion euros by 2030. But if the digitization process were to be accelerated, another 1.5 trillion in benefits could be added. additional by the end of the decade.
In total, therefore, the objectives of the Digital Decade would make it possible to “unlock” economic value of 2.8 trillion euros, a value equivalent to 21 per cent of the current European economy. Most (55 percent) of this value will depend on cloud computing.
THE COUNTRIES STUDIED
To carry out the study, Public First surveyed 6,500 consumers and 7,000 businesses in nine EU member countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden.
WHAT AMAZON WEB SERVICES SAID
Tanuja Randery, manager of Amazon Web Services – who commissioned the report and is interested, given her business, in drawing the attention of policymakers to the digital issue – told Reuters that “the biggest obstacle we have heard from our customers and that we have also found in this report is the lack of digital skills ". The use of cloud computing services should strengthen the competitiveness of enterprises and therefore stimulate growth; many companies, such as Amazon Web Services itself (aka AWS), are offering free cloud training to spread skills.
SPREAD DIGITAL SKILLS
According to Public First, it is not only important to increase the number of ICT specialists (the acronym stands for information and communication technologies), but also to widen the diffusion of digital skills among unskilled workers. Otherwise “it will be difficult to reach the European Union's target of 20 million ICT specialists by 2030 without improving inclusion”.
However, according to the report, only 61 per cent of the European population will have basic digital skills by 2030, much less than the 81 per cent target. Public First therefore advises European authorities to develop plans to stimulate the adoption of cloud systems and artificial intelligence by companies, and to increase public funding for research.
TOO FEW DIGITALIZED ENTERPRISES
The report says that most companies have not equipped themselves with digital systems and that there is a shortage of skilled workers on digital: this condition risks increasing the operating costs of companies and slowing overall economic growth.
THE EUROPEAN UNICORN
On the other hand, in 2021 there were more than two hundred unicorns (i.e. unlisted startups whose market valuation exceeds a billion dollars) in the European Union. According to Public First, the block will be able to double the number by 2030.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/unione-europea-digital-decade/ on Thu, 16 Jun 2022 13:37:35 +0000.