# Analysis of Digital Skills and Infrastructure in EU Countries Based on DESI 2024 Data
## 1 Introduction  
One of the main priorities of the EU countries is the digital transformation of states. The goal of digital transformation is to develop and implement new opportunities and methods in virtually all areas of human activity: education, research, work, medicine, business, and entertainment [1]. The directions of development of the EU digital transformation by 2030 are reflected in the strategic document \"The EU Digital Decade\". The political program \"The EU Digital Decade by 2030\" focuses on such main areas of activity of the countries and governments of the EU member states as secure digital infrastructure and digital skills, digitalization of public services, and digitalization of the economy [2].  
This, in turn, aims to clarify the features of the main trends, advantages, and disadvantages of digital transformation in the context of reorganizing the relevant processes in different countries [3; 4; 5].  
The European Union annually conducts a comprehensive monitoring of the digital progress of its member states using the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). The latest data is the DESI 2024 data, which allows updating the assessment of the digital transformation and its components: digital competences, network infrastructure, digital public services, and the level of implementation of digital technologies in business and management. Since the level of development of the digital skills of the population and the state of the digital infrastructure are key factors in the socio-economic growth and competitiveness of countries, it is essential to identify bottlenecks in these areas and develop recommendations for their elimination. In this case, it is essential to pay attention to the following contextual factors:  
* Uneven digital development between EU countries, which may create a risk of digital fragmentation of Europe and, as a result, a decrease in the overall level of its digital economy;
* An insufficient level of digital skills among the population and workers, which will slow down the digital transformation of the labor market and cause low labor productivity;
* Limited network infrastructure in certain areas, which makes access to modern digital services difficult or impossible.  
And, perhaps most importantly, it is necessary to review the relevance of the existing DESI indicators that are being monitored and, if required, develop recommendations for their update.  
The main contributions of this paper relate to the state of digitization in the EU countries and can be summarized as follows:  
* An analysis of the digital skills, and the fixed and mobile digital infrastructure of EU countries was analyzed;
* It has been shown that the successful development of the economy and society requires the harmonization of digital skills and digital infrastructure;
* It has been shown that the feasibility of adding a new indicator to DESI that would separately consider the 5G technology frequency range (24.25 GHz-52.6 GHz), which would allow assessing the country's readiness for technological leaps in areas that require extremely low latency and high reliability and speed.