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Saturday, 27.04.2024, 01:02
Digitalisation in economy and society: new Eurostat publication
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Surfing, chatting, online shopping are among peoples’ everyday
activities while using various information and communication technologies
(ICT), e.g. computers, laptops or/and smartphones. Nowadays, people spend a
considerable part of time online whether at work, at school or university, at
home or on the move.
People often depend on the digital devices to stay in
contact with family and friends, to get directions to shops, hotels and
restaurants or to check bank accounts.
The same is for businesses, which operate within a digital
environment too: more and more they conduct business electronically with their
partners and interact online with customers. The internet is the cornerstone
for their e-business operations as it provides limitless capacities to connect
people and businesses worldwide.
Statistics can help to better understand the challenges our
digital society is facing. This is the aim of the brand new digital publication
Digital economy & society in the EU, issued in June by Eurostat, the statistical office of the
European Union.
Digital single market’s ABC
The statistical analysis provided in the new Eurostat
publication can help to better understand the challenges faced by the Digital
Single Market policy of the EU, which is one of the ten political priorities of
the European Commission. This part presents some background information about
the content and goals of this policy.
By presenting easily understandable statistics on several
ICT-related topics through texts, graphs, dynamic data visualisations and an
animation, this new digital publication by Eurostat aims to provide answers in
a user-friendly way to the most common questions asked by EU citizens on the
digital economy and society.
There are 3 important parts in the publication:
- Profile of the digital society & businesses
This part focuses on how and for which purposes people and
businesses go online, as well as on digital skills. It includes, among others,
information on mobile internet access, internet activities, use of social media
as well as the employment of ICT specialists.
Online behaviour differs widely between the EU states: in
2016, making online telephone and video calls was most popular among internet
users in Bulgaria (80%), participating in social networks was most common in
Hungary (83%), internet banking in Finland (92%) and reading news online in
Lithuania (93%).
-E-commerce
This part looks in detail at e-commerce from two
perspectives: people ordering goods and services online, and businesses selling
electronically.
This section has shown the readers, for example that 66% of
internet users were shopped online during 2016 and that 20% of EU businesses’
product and services are sold via the internet. Across the EU member states,
businesses conducting e-sales were most common in Ireland (30%), Denmark (29%),
Germany and Sweden (both 28%).
-Internet security & the cloud
This publication’s section provides information about
privacy and the protection of personal information online, ICT security
policies of businesses as well as about private and business use of cloud
services.
It is interesting to know that, for instance three quarters
of the EU’s internet users had not encountered any security related problem
when being online, while 21% caught viruses or similar computer infections.
The Eurostat publication is available for the European Union
28 member states and for the EFTA countries.
Source: European Commission, Eurostat
publication “Digital economy & society in the EU”, Brussels, 16.06.2017.
Eurostat’s full publication is at:
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