Press Release - To Unlock Potential of Digital Age, Europe Must Go Beyond Internet Access, Says World Bank
© 2017 The World Bank Group, All Rights Reserved
BUCHAREST, March 7 2017− 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 today, 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.
“We are clearly seeing that internet access alone does not automatically translate into economic gains,” says Hans Timmer, Chief Economist for the Europe and Central Asia region of the World Bank. “Given their level of technological development, countries around Europe should be doing better in terms of e-commerce, but we are not seeing the Googles or Facebooks emerging out of Europe just yet.”
Low usage of digital payment systems and stringent regulations are some of the complementary factors hindering the growth of the Internet economy in the EU, notes the report. For example, early retirement and the lack of lifelong learning opportunities for older workers limit their access to jobs in the digital economy of several EU countries.
Additionally, less than 30 percent of firms in the EU use cloud computing and even fewer use this technology for more sophisticated uses beyond e-mail, such as managerial and accounting tasks.
“Romania is well positioned to benefit from opportunities being provided in today’s digital world. We have fast and affordable broadband access around the country and an all-round high-quality infrastructure. Our goal is to correlate these opportunities with the capable Romanian workforce through targeted and sustainable policies. And this is exactly what we aim to do in the following phase of our Government Program for Digital Convergence,” said Augustin Jianu, Romania's Minister of Communications and Information Society.
page source http://www.worldbank.org/
