Last week, the EC announced the coming into force of the Digital Decade policy program 2030, in cooperation with Member States and the European Parliament (EP). This new policy program encompasses concrete targets and objectives in four key areas, being: digital skills, infrastructure (including connectivity), digitization of businesses, and online public service – in respect with the Declaration on digital rights and principles.
This means that, from now on until 2030, the EU Member States – in collaboration with the EP, the EC, and the Council of the EU – will shape their digital policies so as to achieve the different objectives in four areas in order to:
- improve citizens’ basic and advanced digital skills
- improve the take-up of new technologies (AI, data and cloud, for instance) in the EU businesses, including small ones
- enhance the EU’s connectivity, computing and data infrastructure
- make public services and administration available online
The Digital Decade policy program 2030 – as well as the Declaration on digital rights and principles – aims at guiding Member States in defining the former policies. The collaboration between stakeholders is to be strengthened with the formation of a Digital Decade Board – composed of a high-level expert group – in order to address digital transformation issues. This will be accompanied with a new Forum so as to discuss stakeholders’ views.
“Technology will continue to play an increasingly important role in our societies and in our lives. With the monitoring mechanism we now have concrete goals for how to make digital technology work for all people and for businesses” – Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age
In the upcoming months, both the EC and Member States will establish key performance indicators (KPIs) so as to monitor and evaluate progress towards individual targets. After this, Member States will have 9 months to design their national strategic roadmaps so as to elaborate on the policies, measures, actions, they will take to meet the program’s objectives.
Considering this, the EC will have the responsibility to assess each Member State’s progress, within the scope of an annual progress report, called the State of the Digital Decade. The first annual progress report is to be published in June 2023.
Learn more about the Digital Decade program here.
