Digital, Italy lags behind and on skills it risks falling far behind the EU targets
I-Com: Italy 11th in the EU and on basic digital skills at the current stage of progress the 2030 targets will be attainable in 2465
3' min read
Key points
3' min read
More than 130 years behind the required target for the digitisation of SMEs. If, on the other hand, we talk about digital skills, at the current rate of growth the targets to be reached by 2030, as required by the EU, would be more than 400 years behind schedule.
This is not a typo: for basic digital skills the risk is to hit the target in 2465. These are the numbers, certainly provocative, contained in the study by I-Com, a think tank led by economist Stefano da Empoli, which today will present the Report 'Connecting Italy: the innovation of the Country System in the European digital decade'. What emerges six years from 2030 - the deadline set by the EU - is that Italy is at a crossroads, with steps forward made, in some cases even considerable, but also numerous challenges that could slow down the achievement of the goals set by Brussels.
Digitisation, Italy 11th in the EU
Also because Italy, on the whole, is losing positions on digital compared to other EU countries. This is what the synthetic Ibi (I-Com ultrabroadband index) developed to summarise information on demand and supply of connectivity in the EU Member States says. The variables selected are 14: they range from SMEs that sell at least 1% of their turnover online, to households that are connected at least 100 Mbps, to fixed ultrabroadband connections, to digital skills of households.
Thus we read, from the I-Com study, of an Italy that in one year has dropped from ninth to 11th place in the ranking with its 64 points (far from the 81 of Denmark or the 73 of Spain or the 72 of Sweden). On the connectivity side, in mobile networks the situation is even better than the EU average, but the delay in coverage in fixed networks weighs heavily: considering the percentage of households covered by Ftth and Fttb, Italy is lagging behind with a percentage lower than the average (59% vs. 64%) and very far from that of the best performers Spain and Romania, Portugal and Bulgaria, where coverage percentages reach 95%, 92% and 89% respectively.
Within this framework I-Com went to study how close Italy is to the Digital Decade targets to be reached by 2030. For mobile networks as for fixed ones (100% coverage of the territory) the target should be reached by 2025, in the first case, and by 2029 in the second.
