Spain’s digital progress must be balanced, inclusive and comprehensive

The political programme approved in 2022, which sets digital targets for European economies by the end of this decade, is an excellent thermometer to see how our country is carrying out this necessary technological transformation. As in all previous cases, the UGT wants to provide constructive and objective criticism in order to highlight the areas where we need to focus our efforts, thus achieving a digitalisation that leaves no one behind, where competitiveness meets the necessary labour and social inclusion.

Digital Intensity of SMEs

An important indicator where we remain far below what we want: four out of every ten Spanish SMEs do not even reach the basic status of digital intensity, with very low growth in the last two years, amounting to only 0.7% since 2021, four times lower than the progress corresponding to the European average, at 2.6%-

We cannot forget that SMEs are the fundamental axis of our economy, covering 95% of our productive structure, generating more than half of the GDP and employing more than ten million people. For this reason, as we have previously noted, assistance programs such as the Digital Kit, although they are positive and contribute to their modernization, must be complemented by ICT training plans for the workforce employed by these companies, in order to ensure that they have sufficient skills to take advantage of these funds to modernize new technologies.

Technological employment

Spain is again below the European average for ICT experts: 4.4% of total employment – compared to 4.8% of the European average (which is 8% less than in the EU27).

This information on its own may mean little without further context. On the one hand, our country is at the forefront of Europe in terms of the number of ICT graduates per year (more than 217,000 in 2022 alone, placing us fourth on the continent). In fact, the European Commission itself congratulates us on our progress on this issue, which year after year grows above the community average in the supply of tech talent (5.2% of ICT graduates out of all graduates, 4.5% among the EU-27). That is to say, we produce a huge amount of digital talent, more and better than any other country around us.

However, although we have already spent 30% of the time to achieve this goal (there are only seven years left until 2030), we are still 50% away from achieving it. The main reason that explains this dysfunction is the inability of Spanish companies to create job offers at the level of our European neighbors, both in terms of pay and attractiveness in terms of career development or work-life balance. Faced with this dilemma, all our tech youth are emigrating en masse.

Digital skills of the population

Congratulating Spain on its progress in this area in its annual report hides a problem that needs to be addressed: today in Spain, 1,200,000 people over 65 do not have a single digital skill. Not a single one: they do not know how to make an appointment with a doctor, or use online banking, or place an order, or even how to send or receive an email.

We cannot allow ourselves to rely on good overall figures and forget an integral part of our society, because they may be “older”, because they may already be “retired”, or because they live predominantly in rural areas. A state that defends equal opportunities, social and territorial cohesion cannot remain motionless in the face of this type of digital inequality.

Digital government services

In a world where the digitalization of processes is accelerating, it is incomprehensible that the digital government services available to citizens have dropped by more than two points (-2.3%). The decline in the transparency of governments when it comes to the process of providing online services is alarming and requires careful analysis to find out which administrations are abandoning the achievements that are so necessary for our citizens.

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