Digitally-skilled citizens key to building a strong EU digital and innovative ecosystem

Through the Covid19 pandemic, many of us turned to digital tools to keep our lives and economies afloat. Some of these measures are temporary but others seem to be here to stay. 

To explore the opportunities and risks of this rapid digital transformation, FIPRA brought together an expert panel with Aura Salla, Public Policy Director and Head of EU Affairs at Facebook, Stelios Kympouropoulos, member of the European Parliament & Committee for Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL), Prof. Stefana Broadbent, a digital anthropologist at Politecnico di Milano, and Robert Madelin, Chairman of FIPRA International. The panel was moderated by Jacki Davis.

All speakers agreed that the pandemic marks a point of no return in how we approach the digital world. Of the many lessons learned, the panel emphasised the need for economies and businesses to become digitally resilient. The first steps to achieving this resilience are, on one side, equipping people with the skills needed to adapt to the digital world and, on the other side, providing the necessary tools and infrastructure for proper adaptation.

Giving consumers basic digital skills is crucial to building the competitive and innovative EU digital ecosystem needed to achieve EU strategic autonomy.

For Facebook, the success of digital champions also relies on a digitally-educated consumer base.

“We need consumers who can help companies become the EU digital champions that we want to see. But for that to happen, we need to make sure that people have the right digital skills,” said Facebook’s Aura Salla.

“Today, 42% of European citizens do not possess basic digital skills. This is something that we, as a company, take responsibility for as we believe that digitally-skilled consumers are key to building a strong EU digital and innovative ecosystem,” she added.

The pandemic has shown that humans do learn quickly in times of necessity, but that there needs to be adequate frameworks in place to guide them. The challenge therefore lies on how we regulate and organise the digital space to enable people to thrive within it. As Robert Madelin put it, “We have to get this right.”  

For that to happen, a real societal debate encouraged by our public institutions should take place. Citizens should be empowered to have a constructive discussion on how the new digital world should look, and on the opportunities and challenges it poses. “The novelty of this digital world means that old policy approaches cannot work. We thus need to work together, across sectors, to find appropriate ways to organise the digital world, which will inevitably become part of our future” Madelin stated.  

The webinar highlighted the extension of public participatory online services as a way to foster collective debate, by making use of the many digital tools available to harness our collective intelligence.

“We tend to underestimate that the internet space is a new world. What are the affordances of the new world? What are the challenges? Do we want rules, or do we just want evolving ideas of what responsible behaviour should be? When the world is changing drastically, it may not be enough to rely on 20th century techniques to find the 21st century answers,” said Madelin.

Digital platforms have been key to replacing human contact during the sanitary crisis but have also dealt with increasing misinformation as a result.

Social distancing led to a surge of information exchange online, increasing the risk for the spread of “fake news.” Drawing from her vast expertise, Stefana Broadbent further explained the phenomenon as an “epidemiology of ideas just like an epidemiology of viruses”

“Fake news has strong cognitive elements that makes it stickier than other forms of information. When addressing the problem of disinformation, it is therefore important to think about why some ideas travel faster than others, just like viruses, taking in account the cognitive elements of information,” she said.

Given growing concerns about hate-speech, misinformation and bullying online, the European Commission’s proposals for a Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act to regulate the digital space come at the right time. As Robert Madelin stated, these policy initiatives seek to incentivise digital service providers to “maximise the good and minimise the bad” emerging from their services.  

For the European Parliament, it is important that these regulations strike the right balance between limiting misinformation and hate-speech and conserving the fundamental right that is freedom of expression. In this quest for an equilibrium, the European Parliament will ensure that decisions are based on wide stakeholder contributions and sound data.  

Bringing to the table the perspective of policymakers, MEP Stelios Kympouropoulos stated: “We need to make the best use of our position to create digital services and market acts, striking balance between safeguarding the civic debate and protecting fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression.”  

“We need to adopt an inclusive approach by consulting broadly across stakeholders and different groups in our society, but also making use of data to design and implement the right policies,” he added.

The digital world holds many promises and challenges. Whether we reap the benefits or losses will come down to how well we, all together, decide to organise the digital space.  

The EU has set the digital transition as a key priority for the years to come, positioning itself as a pioneer in digital rule- and standard-setting. This will be a stepping-stone in the realisation of our digital future.

(Written by Sophie Marandon)