EN Official Journal of the European Union C 242/61

Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the ‘Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions — Towards a thriving data-driven economy’

(COM(2014) 442 final)

(2015/C 242/11)

Rapporteur:

Anna NIETYKSZA

On 16 July 2014, the European Commission decided to consult the European Economic and Social Committee, under Article 304 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, on the:

Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions — Towards a thriving data-driven economy

COM(2014) 442 final.

The Section for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society, which was responsible for preparing the Committee’s work on the subject, adopted its opinion on 7 January 2015.

At its 504th plenary session, held on 21 and 22 January 2015 (meeting of 21 January), the European Economic and Social Committee adopted the following opinion by 213 votes to 1 with 11 abstentions.

1. Conclusions and recommendations

1.1. The EESC takes careful note of the Commission’s communication, which calls for the establishment in the European Union of a thriving data-driven economy and thus a digital economy using information technologies. The coordinated action plan must help to realise the objectives of the Digital Agenda for Europe. The EESC draws attention to the need to draw up a detailed action plan.

1.2. The EU’s Horizon 2020 programme and the national programmes to fund research, innovation and implementation, and the promotion of entrepreneurship and sectoral innovation will play a significant part in realising these aims.

1.3. The EESC stresses that the broad dissemination of information technologies in all areas of society and the economy, culture and education will provide enormous development opportunities. The development opportunities provided thanks to ICT concern not only European corporations and large firms but also innovative businesses: small, medium-sized and micro-enterprises.

1.4. In order to make full use of these opportunities, it is necessary to support IT-related research and development in the technical but also economic and social sciences. The European Commission and EU Member States need to draw up effective mechanisms for funding research via public funds together with incentives to finance such research using private funds. The EESC regrets the substantial reduction in funding for the financing of digital infrastructure under the Connecting Europe Facility and strongly advocates drawing appropriate conclusions. A new investment plan presented by Commission President Jean-Claude JUNCKER in December 2014, aimed at mobilising at least EUR 315 billion in the form of additional public and private investments in key areas such as digital infrastructure, is in this context a welcome policy response.

1.5. In order to ensure that the data-driven economy can develop unhindered, provision should be made for an appropriate legal framework, and strategies and means for protecting personal data and information security, and a European cybersecurity strategy should be implemented. Protection and security of information will bolster consumer confidence, as well as business certainty for firms.

1.6. The EESC stresses that, in order to protect data and information security, cooperation is needed between national and European level public administrations and electronic communications regulatory bodies and consumer and competition bodies.

1.7. The Committee calls on the European Commission to support all activities aimed at realising the objectives of the Digital Agenda for Europe as ways of laying the foundations of a data-driven economy, including the development of high-speed broadband infrastructure and generally accessible, interoperable and reliable cloud services, big data processing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Next Generation Networks (NGN) for electronic communications, including those using 5G and subsequent technologies which are currently in development.

1.8. Digital technologies are emerging and creating new values not only in terms of the economy but in all areas of social and cultural life. That is why it is very important to encourage the development of digital skills for society as a whole, including older people and those at risk of social, economic and cultural exclusion for health, economic or educational reasons. New educational content and methods should be introduced on a broad front, especially to enable workers to retrain and acquire new skills.

1.9. Public administrations will in the next few years have to learn to make optimal use of digital data and electronic communications channels in order to increase efficiency and develop broad-based cooperation with citizens, making use of their active participation. The precondition for this participation is well planned public services and open and accessible machine-readable data in all areas of the economy and government. The EESC recommends extensive training in digital skills for employees of public administrations, including skills relating to the design of advanced services, procurement and making use of the services of experts and specialists.

1.10. The EESC recommends that public administrations ensure that public information is reusable, by making it available in the form of open, machine-readable data, with the necessary safeguards. Access to reusable public information is particularly important for small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe.

2. Gist and context of the Commission communication

2.1. The data-driven economy, and more generally the digital economy, is an area of strategic economic importance for the EU Member States. Today digital data is the basis for the activity of all areas of the economy, government, culture and social and health services. Making innovative use of this data is the main source of increased productivity for the EU economy.

2.2. The widespread use of digital and digitised data — together with its ease of transmission and processing — make this data a new and especially valuable resource for society and economy.

2.3. Digital data is today generated, collected and processed in all areas of economic and social life. There are more and more innovative firms for which digital data is the basis for, and main focus of, their business. Spatial and geolocation data is a particularly valuable element of the data-driven economy.

2.4. The fastest growing sector of the IT market is big data. According to IDC, between 2012 and 2017 this sector will grow at an annual average rate of around 27 % (six times faster than the ICT market as a whole) and, as a result of this, by 2017 the value of the global market in big data technologies and services is set to reach EUR 23,7 billion. The area of cloud services is also expected to grow very rapidly.

2.5. Given the development of solutions and applications for the Internet of Things (IoT), including smart city infrastructure, the next few years are likely to see massive growth in the volume of data arising from the development of the IoT. Research firms forecast that by 2020 the number of IoT smart object devices throughout the world will rise to 26 billion, a figure that exceeds the number of computers connected to the internet several times over. Business and government alike will have to learn to cope with this huge increase in data volumes — and to use it creatively.

2.6. It is especially important to ensure that the economy of the EU’s Member States is able to unleash the huge economic potential of big data and the Internet of Things, including innovative firms delivering solutions in these areas and enterprises from all other sectors of the EU’s economy, which apply them in their own areas of activity.

2.7. The European Commission communication points to the need to create the conditions to facilitate cloud computing, high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure and the platforms and services which make use of these solutions. According to the European Commission’s estimates (1), cloud services could lead to an increase of 2,5 million in the number of jobs in Europe and raise EU Member States’ GDP by EUR 160 billion by 2020.

2.8. According to the Commission, another key element is data-driven innovation (DDI), i.e. the ability of businesses and government to creatively use information derived from in-depth data analysis, including public information made available for re-use. The process of opening up data and making it available for reuse can provide EU Member States with economic benefits of approximately EUR 40 billion per annum while the total direct and indirect economic benefits arising from the application and use of public sector information in the economy of the EU-27 are estimated at EUR 140 billion per annum (2).

2.9. The Commission emphasises that this will require highly skilled specialists, broad application of open data and the creation of an appropriate legal framework on data ownership, its protection and the means of making it available.

2.10. The EU’s Horizon 2020 programme and national research and innovation funding programmes, as well as measures to encourage entrepreneurship and sectoral innovation will play a major part in implementing these plans.

2.11. The European Commission will use various means to support digital entrepreneurship in Europe, not least by promoting open access to data, facilitating access to cloud computing, fostering links and cooperation between local data incubators, as well as developing digital skills and competences, including on the basis of the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs.

3. General comments

3.1. The EESC generally accepts and endorses the characteristics of a thriving data-driven economy set out in the Commission’s communication. As outlined in the communication, data analysis means better results, procedures and decisions, which stimulates innovation and the development of new solutions, whilst at the same time making it possible to predict trends and to prepare for future events. Nonetheless, the EESC draws attention to the fact that the communication fails to clearly set out the Commission’s action strategy needed to develop this type of economy in the EU.

3.2. The EESC draws attention to the importance of certain of the activities proposed in the communication for the development of infrastructure in the broad sense which is necessary for the data-driven economy, in particular regarding: — availability of necessary, reliable infrastructure enabling the interoperability of systems for data collection, processing and use — including infrastructure making broad use of effective and secure cloud solutions and services, — availability of good quality, reliable datasets, — appropriate conditions and legal, organisational and educational frameworks, as well as working conditions, to facilitate cooperation between different bodies with a view to ensuring an appropriate level of skills and developing solutions based on innovative data use, — support for policies and the creation of a legal framework stimulating the innovative use of open, machine-readable data in all areas of the economy and government.

4. Specific comments

4.1. The EESC supports the development and use of the mechanisms and resources provided for in the Horizon 2020 programme, especially those designed to make available service platform solutions such as PaaS (Platform as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and others based on public, private and hybrid cloud solutions.

4.2. The EESC supports activities aimed at implementing the European cloud strategy, in accordance with earlier Committee opinions on the subject.

4.3. With regard to the creation of contractual public-private partnerships (CPPP), as put forward by the Commission, the EESC supports these while considering it important to clearly formulate long-term strategies and related research and development and financing policies.

4.4. The EESC draws attention to the need to ensure appropriate financing for research and implementation work in areas likely to see the fastest growth in the coming years and which are essential for maintaining the global competitiveness of the EU economy. These are above all: big data processing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Next Generation Networks (NGN) for electronic communications, including those using 5G and subsequent technologies which are currently in development, as well as cybersecurity issues.

4.5. The EESC believes it is important for the results of big data processing and data analysis and search systems to be accurate and reliable. Hence the need to support research and implementation work, including in the area of semantic search, geo-spatial data analysis and the fast processing of big data. It is crucial to ensure appropriate resources for research work given the trend towards budget cuts in the Member States and at the level of the Council — from EUR 9 billion to EUR 1,4 billion.

4.6. Funding the development and innovation work of start-ups in the digital economy is very important, since there are still few funding mechanisms geared to such needs. Funding new technology sectors must involve skilfully combining funding from the ‘Horizon 2020’ and other central EU research programmes as well as Member States’ budgetary resources and also encourage private companies to engage in strategic cooperation as part of contractual public-private partnerships (CPPP).

4.7. To fully unleash the potential of a knowledge-based economy, it is very important to retrain workers so that they have the skills needed to work in newly emerging jobs and economic sectors. This is especially important given that 80 % of jobs are forecast to require digital knowledge and skills by 2020.

4.8. The EESC believes there should be a greater emphasis on education which can equip everybody with the appropriate digital knowledge and skills needed to use the digital devices and services that are playing an ever greater role in our economic and social lives, in government and in the world of culture. This approach must cover all stages and forms of education: from primary to adult education.

4.9. The EESC stresses the need for the development of new regulatory frameworks and means geared to the forthcoming changes and the need to develop the data-driven economy.

4.10. As part of regulatory policies, and in keeping with its opinion on internet governance (TEN/549), the EESC considers that particular attention should be paid to managing the internet value chain to ensure that all service and content providers participating in this chain receive a share in the profits from digital products and services which is commensurate with their investment.

4.11. The EESC draws attention to the need for effective implementation of mechanisms such as those described and provided for in the eIDAS regulation, which are aimed at boosting trust in the digital economy by ensuring a consistent EU legal basis for electronic interaction between businesses, citizens and public bodies.

4.12. In this regard, it is increasingly important to draw attention to the apparent deadlock in the negotiations on the Data Protection Regulation, which has been before the Council for months with no conclusion in sight. This state of affairs is clearly damaging for all stakeholders, especially in areas that are of such significance for unleashing the potential of a data-driven economy.

4.13. The new regulatory framework must, on the one hand, make it possible for firms participating in the market to develop, and support innovation and competitiveness while, on the other hand, safeguarding trade and protecting consumer rights and privacy. Cybersecurity issues are particularly important, given that information and cloud computing networks will contain more and more data that is very important from an economic and societal perspective, including sensitive data, such as medical information.

4.14. The EESC points out that the communication pays relatively little attention to data ownership issues or to the need to develop new intellectual property protection solutions geared to the needs of the digital economy, including the creative industries, which in the coming years will be one of the areas of dynamic growth.

4.15. The EESC is open to cooperation with other organisations, inter alia, on building consumer confidence in digital economy services and formulating long-term strategies and programmes, as well as educational programmes enabling their implementation.

Brussels, 21 January 2015. The President of the European Economic and Social Committee Henri MALOSSE

(1) Communication on Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe (COM(2012) 529 final).

(2) Communication on Open data. An engine for innovation, growth and transparent governance (COM(2011) 882 final).