Digital Agenda targets still elusive

Could do better.

That’s the verdict of the first Digital Agenda scoreboard published on 31 May 2011.

The scoreboard monitors progress towards the European Commission’s Digital Agenda targets of having all Europeans on broadband by 2013, and for them all to have access to 30Mbps broadband, and for half of them to have access to 100Mbps by 2020.

It found 65% of citizens go online at least once a week, and that almost 32% post content to share online. The percentage of people who have not been online dropped from 30% to 26%.

But it was “disappointed” by progress on high speed broadband projects, and said there was “insufficient progress” in cross-border eCommerce, the online presence of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), roaming prices and public research.

A conference, Every European Digital, the same day heard that there was money available for these projects, but there were problems in “absorbtion” or the capacity of (especially) new and smaller member states to generate, procure and implement such projects.

Other points were:

• 40% of EU citizens now shop online
• 41% use eGovernment services, and 20% have completed forms online.
• 6.2% use solid state lighting, up from 1.7% in 2009)
• 8.8% buy across borders,barely up from 8.1% in 2010, and far off the target of 20% by 2015
• 26% of SMEs buy online, but only 13% sell online
• Mobile calls still cost three times what fixed line calls cost, despite falling by €0.15. The target is parity by 2015.
• Public investment in ICT R&D did not exceed the €5.7bn of the previous year. The target is €11bn by 2020.

The commission also made available the underlying data so that anyone can download and play with it.

So who are the most online, most active, most sharing citizens? See below.

Europe's online exhibitionists