The European Commission’s strategy increasingly places people at the center of the digital transition, emphasizing the importance of digital skills for European growth and conscious citizenship, which are essential for the development of an online society. This is highlighted in the Commission’s communication on achieving the target of 80% of people with basic digital skills by 2030: “Pushing in this direction can build a society that trusts digital products and online services, identifies misinformation and fraud attempts, protects against cyberattacks, scams, and online fraud, and where children learn to understand and navigate the myriad of information they are exposed to online.” The Digital Decade 2030 Strategic Program establishes an annual cooperation cycle to achieve common objectives and targets. This framework is based on an annual cooperation mechanism involving the Commission and member states.
The cooperation mechanism includes:
– A structured, shared-based monitoring system to measure progress towards each of the 2030 targets.
– An annual report in which the Commission evaluates progress and recommends possible actions. The first annual “state of the digital decade” report was published in September 2023.
– Every two years, adapted national strategic roadmaps for the Digital Decade, where Member States describe the actions taken or planned to achieve the 2030 targets.
– A mechanism to support the implementation of multinational projects, the European Digital Infrastructure Consortium.
The Commission has developed EU-wide trajectories: the reference trajectories outline how the EU will progress according to current trends, while the predicted trajectories outline the path that annual progress should follow to achieve the targets by 2030. The difference between the estimated trends and the ideal path will allow the Commission to monitor the gap in the effort needed. The Commission will review the targets by 2026 to take stock of technological, economic, and social developments.
Italy, on the other hand, has an ambitious strategy for digital transformation, outlined in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The main objectives are:
1. Digital identity: The objective is to spread digital identity, ensuring that at least 70% of the population uses it.
2. Digital skills: The aim is to close the digital skills gap, with at least 70% of the population being digitally proficient.
3. Cloud adoption: Approximately 75% of Italian public administrations should use cloud services.
4. Ultra-fast connection: Italy aims to provide 1Gbps connections throughout the national territory by 2026.
These objectives are fundamental to ensure an effective digital transition and to position Italy among the European leaders in the sector by 2026.
The digital world is a vast and complex topic, and opinions on it can vary greatly. It has brought many opportunities into everyone’s life but still requires us to manage the possible consequences of a wrong approach to the medium. As we move more into a future dependent on these technologies, concerning the tasks we carry out in daily life and on a global level, for communication and the research and development of new technologies, good digital education and new solutions for the protection of personal data can lead to better and more conscious use of the internet. The internet can often be difficult to use because it is too dispersive, and the speed of information has unfortunately brought out false or unverified news. When information is identified, it is always a good idea to check the source and its reliability. This operation generally requires time and, above all, the ability to know how to do it.
