The European Commission has recently published the results of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2022, a report presenting data from EU countries in areas such as human capital, connectivity, integration of digital technology and digital public services.
In Europe, during the Covid19 pandemic, the Member States have been advancing in their digitalization efforts, but still struggle to fill the gaps in digital skills, digital transformation of SMEs and roll-out of advanced 5G networks. As a matter of fact, the adoption of key digital technologies by businesses, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data, remains low.
The Recovery and Resilience Facility, with about €127 billion dedicated to reforms and investments in the area of digital, offers an unprecedented opportunity in this field.
At the national level, Italy ranks 18th among the 27 EU Member States in the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2022. Although over the last few years Italy has substantially improved its scores, in particular thanks to the setting up of the Ministry for Technological Innovation and Digital Transition, our country is called to adopt key strategies and to launch strategic measures aimed at accelerating the digitalization process.
Being Italy the third EU economy by size, in the European Commission’s vision, Italy’s advances in the field of digital transformation in the next few years will be a crucial contribution to the EU achievement of the goals for the 2030 decade.
The analysis of the Italian results shows that:
- More than half the Italian citizens has not even acquired basic digital skills, and this does not allow to fill the gap with the European average;
- With regard to connectivity, there have been advances in terms of distribution of wide-band services and network implementation;
- Of the Italian SMEs, 60% has reached at least a basic level of digital intensity and the use of cloud services, in particular, has reported a considerable growth;
- Over the last two years, the use of digital public services has reported a remarkable growth, although only 40% of Italian internet users use them, as compared to an average of 65% in the European Union.
Digital Economy and Society Index 2022 – European Commission Communication
The Digital Economy and Society Index — Countries’ performance in digitisation– Italy’s performance
