14/03/2016
Monitoring digital progress in the EU
The Digital Single Market Strategy was launched in May 2015 and since then the EU has been eager to monitor the digital progress made so far by EU Member States and citizens to have a regular overview.
On February 2016, the European Commission organized The Digitak4EU Stakeholder Forum in Brussels, Belgium. It focused on the growth made in creating a Digital Single Market in Europe. This year’s edition comprised five main areas - from the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), to digital economy indicators, data and computing opportunities for Europe, innovation from start-ups and high-growth businesses, and the social and economic role played by platforms.
During the forum, the 2016 issue of the
Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) was published and discussed as being the main analytical tool providing evidential input for the assessment of digital development in the EU. DESI is an online tool developed to measure the progress of EU Member States towards a digital economy and society, bringing together a set of relevant indicators on Europe's current digital policy mix. Some of these indicators include an overall
index on various dimensions (connectivity, human capital, use of the internet, integration of digital technology and digital public services) and sub-dimensions (focusing from basic digital skills up to social media or online games use). The DESI online tool is quite flexible in terms of merging and comparing its indicators for countries, accessing a wide age range (in sub groups from 16 to 74), creating graphs and downloading data.
The latest figures from DESI show that 67 per cent of Europeans now go online every day, as high-speed connection has been increasing exponentially since 2011 and mobile broadband has become a reality for 86 per cent of European homes covered by 4G.
Being aware of how Europe is performing over recent years has been a key concern for the European Commission because it allows the institution to analyse and anticipate the missing gaps for digital users while further boosting the digital progress.
A visual summary of DESI is available in this
video. You can also access the European Commission
Digital Scoreboard for more information on how the EU is measuring its digital progress.
