As it
prepares to present its strategy for a EU-wide ‘Digital Single Market’, the
European Commission today released (a new index), ranking all 28 EU member
states based on their digital performance.
Tech.eu, RobinWauters, 24 February 2015
Today at
the well-attended #Digital4EU stakeholder forum in Brussels, the European
Commission has announced a new Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). The
index aims to highlight how digital Europe’s 28 member states really are, and
to demonstrate that borders – and I quote – “remain an obstacle to a
fully-fledged Digital Single Market – one of the top priorities of the Juncker
Commission”.
The new
tool, presented today at the event, provides per-country snapshots of
connectivity (how widespread, fast and affordable broadband is), Internet
skills, the use of online activities from news to shopping, and how key digital
technologies (e-invoices, cloud services, e-commerce, etc) and digital public
services such as e-government and e-health are developed across Europe.
The data is
mostly from 2013 and 2014 and essentially aims to provide an overview of how
digital Europe is. You can argue that the best you can do for this is glorified
guesswork, but FYI the DESI combines more than 30 indicators and uses a
weighting system to rank each country based on its digital performance.
To
calculate a member state’s overall score, each set and subset of indicators
were given a specific weighting by European Commission experts. Connectivity
and digital skills each contribute 25% to the total score. Integration of
digital technology accounts for 20%, while online activities (‘use of
Internet’) and digital public services each contribute 15%.
As you can
see above, right at the top is Denmark, with a 0.68 digital performance score
out of 1, but really Nordic countries are – perhaps unsurprisingly – scoring
well across the board; Sweden and Finland are also in the top 5 alongside
Belgium and The Netherlands.
Not so high
on the European ‘digital performance’ leaderboard are countries like Romania,
Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia and Italy.
Some other
findings from the Index, which overall combines more than 30 indicators:
– A
majority of Europeans use the Internet on a regular basis: 75% in 2014
(compared to 72% in 2013), ranging from 93% in Luxembourg to a meager 48% in
Romania
– Europeans
are apparently very eager to access audiovisual content online: 49% of
Europeans who go online have played or downloaded games, images, films or
music. 39% of households that have a TV watch video on demand
– Small and
medium-sized businesses (SMEs) face barriers with e-commerce: only 15% of SMEs
sell online – and of that 15%, fewer than half do so across borders
– Digital
public services are an everyday reality in some countries but almost
non-existent in others: 33% of European Internet users have used online forms
to send information to public authorities, ranging from 69% in Denmark to only
6% in Romania
– 26% of
general practitioners in Europe use e-prescriptions to transfer prescriptions
to pharmacists over the Internet, but this varies from 100% in Estonia to 0% in
Malta
The
European Commission is currently preparing its Digital Single Market strategy,
which will be presented in May. (By the way, to make sure startups’ voices are
heard as the plans take shape, check out this survey we’ve put together in collaboration with Nesta and the European Digital Forum).
If you’re
interested in digging in: the DESI dataset is available here.
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