The European Commission has published a scoreboard covering the period from May 2010 to May 2011 of how successfully Member States are delivering the agreed targets of the Digital Agenda for Europe after the first year of its existence.
The Digital Agenda committed the EU to carry out specific actions to boost investment in, and use of, digital technologies. The overall progress over the first year of the agenda has been good, with almost 10% of the actions of the Digital Agenda completed, 80% on track and the remaining 10% delayed. However, progress in some areas is lacking, especially when it comes to the roll-out of new super fast broadband networks, one of the key Digital Agenda goals.
Good progress in several goals, mixed in others
The scoreboard shows good progress in several goals of the Digital Agenda, among them regular Internet use that has risen rapidly to 65% of the EU population (the target for 2015 being 75%), with disadvantaged groups like the less well-educated and the elderly using the internet more and non-users of the internet on the decrease. 40% of EU citizens are now shopping online, while 41% use eGovernment services. Low energy lighting is being promoted, making good progress to reducing the energy use of lighting by 20% by 2020.
The scoreboard shows mixed progress in broadband availability and take up: while basic broadband is increasingly available even in remote areas, very high-speed broadband is currently concentrated in only a few, mostly urban areas.
Insufficient cross border e-Commerce and high roaming prices
Insufficient according to the results obtained is the progress in cross-border eCommerce that is barely growing, and the online presence of small and medium-sized enterprises, only 13% of which sell online. Roaming prices fell by 1.5 Eurocents in 2010, but are still more than three times as expensive as domestic calls, while investment by public authorities in information and communications technology development and research did not exceed the EUR 5.7 billion baseline of the previous year.
The implications of the scoreboard will be discussed in Brussels on 16 and 17 June at the Digital Agenda Assembly.
