# Analysis of Digital Skills and Infrastructure in EU Countries Based on DESI 2024 Data
## 4 Results and Discussion
### Digital Skills  
The following indicators are currently used to characterize digital skills:  
* Internet use;
* At least basic digital skills;
* Above basic digital skills;
* Information and communication technology (ICT) specialists;
* ICT graduates. Using these criteria, we will examine the state of society in the EU countries. Let us start with the first indicator--internet use. Figure 2 illustrates the Digital Decade DESI visualization tool interface with this indicator selected in the menu. The unit of measure is the percentage of individuals; only individuals who use the internet at least once a week are counted. As can be seen in Figure 1, internet usage in different EU countries ranges from 79% (Bulgaria) to 99% (Netherlands). The average value of internet usage for the EU is 90.27%. The data provided are for 2023 (the latest available at the moment) and correspond to the age range from 17 to 64. The tool also allows you to see internet usage in the age range from 16 to 24, where the average value is higher at 98.08%. Figure 3 shows data according to the second indicator, \"at least basic digital skills\". As you can see, basic digital skill levels vary significantly across EU countries. It is highest in the Netherlands and Finland (nearly 83%), and lowest in Romania (28%) and Bulgaria. The average value for the EU is 56.56%. Let us look at these same indicators (Figure 4) for another age range from 16 to 24 years old. Table 1 shows the results of the comparison of at least basic digital skills by two age categories. Figure 2: Data on the use of the “internet use” indicator. Figure 4: Data on using the “at least basic digital skills” indicator for the age range from 16 to 24 years old. Figure 3: Data on using the “at least basic digital skills” indicator. The best results, as expected, are for the young category (16-24 years old). The average value for the EU in the young category is 69.97% compared to the Total category at 56.56%. In addition, in the Total category, in the country with the minimum level of digital skills of 27.73% (Romania), this level is nearly three times lower than in the country with the maximum level of 82.7% for the Netherlands. At the same time, for the young category, this gap decreased to nearly two times: 96.09% for Malta and 47.19% for Romania. By DESI's definition, individuals with basic or above-basic digital skills, likely to be assumed to have different qualities for each of these two categories, should possess all of the following five competencies:  
1. Information and data literacy, including reading online news, finding information about services, and activities related to fact-checking online information and its sources;
2. Communication and collaboration;
3. Digital content creation;
4. Safety;
5. Problem solving. The last category itself involves the following: downloading or installing software or apps; changing settings of software, application, or device; online purchases; selling online; using online learning resources; internet banking; looking for a job or sending a job application. Figure 5 shows the level of values of the above-basic digital skills indicator. The number of individuals with a given level of digital skills is much smaller and the spread across different countries is much larger. The average value for the EU is only 27.32% of individuals, the best results being from the Netherlands (maximum, 54.53%) and Finland. The worst results are for Bulgaria (7.73%) and Romania. The next DESI digital skills indicator is ICT specialists. By definition, it only counts employed ICT specialists, and according to 2023 statistics, their number in the EU was almost 10 million. The values of the ICT specialists indicator are shown in Figure 6, where the unit of measure is the percentage of total employment. Figure 5: Data on using the “above basic digital skills” indicator. The two-percentage range (4.8 \(\pm\) 1)% includes 18 countries out of 27 possible, where 4.8% is the average percentage of employed IT specialists in total employment in the EU.