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Digital Transformation 2024 Report Calls for Strengthened Collective Action.
To keep the EU on track to meet its digital transformation goals, EU countries need additional investments in digital skills, high-quality connectivity, and artificial intelligence. Therefore, these are the critical conclusions of the report on the State of the Digital Decade, which assesses progress in achieving the digital goals and targets set for 2030 by the EU's 'Digital Decade Policy Program.' The report also details the national measures to contribute to the EU's digital transformation and analyzes EU countries' national 'Digital Decade' strategic roadmaps. One of the report's key findings is that EU countries must strengthen their actions and be more ambitious in achieving the 'Digital Decade' goals, which is vital to ensuring the EU's future economic prosperity.
However, there are still significant gaps in achieving the targets set out in the report. One of these gaps is fiber networks. Fiber networks reach only 64 percent of households, while 5G networks cover only 50 percent of the EU territory, and their performance is still insufficient to deliver advanced 5G services. Similarly, European companies' use of AI, cloud, and big data remains far below the 75 percent target of the 'Digital Decade' program. According to current trends, by 2030 only 64 percent of businesses will use cloud, 50 percent big data and only 17 percent AI.
To address the shortcomings, the Commission and EU countries should work to promote a genuinely functional "Digital Single Market." They also need to encourage small businesses to use innovative digital tools.
The digital skills targets set by the Digital Decade are also far from being achieved. This is because only 55.6 percent of the EU population has at least basic digital skills. The report calls for EU countries to follow a multi-pronged approach to promote digital skills at all levels of education. It's crucial to encourage young people, especially girls, to take an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as their participation is key to the future of the digital economy.
On a more positive note, EU countries are moving towards their goal of providing online access to all essential public services and electronic health records and providing citizens with secure electronic identities.
It is imperative that EU countries now review and adjust their national roadmaps to align with the objectives of the Digital Decade Policy Program before 2 December 2024. The Commission will closely monitor and evaluate the implementation of these recommendations and report on progress in the State of the Digital Decade report in 2025.
