Countries in the European Union (EU) must enact policies designed to better help workers adapt to new jobs being created by the internet if they want to avoid increasing inequality and exclusion in the region, notes a new World Bank Report. According to Reaping Digital Dividends: Leveraging the Internet for Development in Europe and Central Asia, launched in Bucharest Tuesday, affordable and nearly universal access to the internet has not been enough for countries in the EU to fully benefit from opportunities being created by digital technologies and more needs to be done to develop a policy environment that can better leverage this access by linking workers to digital jobs.
The 2017 Digital Economy and Society Index shows that the EU is making progress but the gap between top digital players and lower-performing countries is still too wide. More efforts and investments are needed to make the most of the Digital Single Market. The use of e-government as a tool to fight corruption is still overlooked.
The European Commission published last week (3 March) the results of the 2017 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) on the performance of the 28 Member States in a wide range of areas, from connectivity and digital skills to the digitisation of businesses and public services.
Weiterlesen: Europe increases internet use but still needs to close the digital gap
Until very recently, Blockchain has been mostly associated with Bitcoin – the digital currency built on top of it. Not trying to underestimate the importance of the latter, it is fair to say that Blockchain technology is much more than digital money.
The need to look beyond the currency and investigate the potential use of the technology in industries outside payments is often emphasized. So should global governments be embracing Blockchain?
Weiterlesen: Power to the People: Blockchain Replaces Government in Europe
Governments and politicians have attempted to exploit social media for their own ends. However, a study published in the International Journal of Electronic Governance reveals that governmental Twitter accounts across the European Union have almost totally failed.
These accounts do not widely engage members of the public and have not created the “communities” their advocates desired in the quest to elicit public adoption of e-government.
European Union leaders last month announced a plan to invest more than $127 million to provide free Wi-Fi services in thousands of cities on the continent. Dubbed WiFi4EU, the plan calls for providing funding to between 6,000 and 8,000 cities in order to deploy free public Wi-Fi.
“Everyone benefiting from connectivity means that it should not matter where you live or how much you earn,” said Jean-Paul Juncker, president of the European Commission and former prime minister of Luxembourg, last year during his state of the union address. “So we propose today to equip every European village and every city with free wireless internet access around the main centers of public life by 2020.”
Weiterlesen: European Union to invest $127 million for free Wi-Fi in thousands of cities