VISIONS FOR EUROPE'S DIGITAL FUTURE: NEW PUBLICATION

How can the digital transformation be successfully shaped within the European Union along a path aligned with democratic values? While mass commercial use of personal and public data is an integral part of the constantly expanding digital economy, what is far less clear is how data could be collected, analysed and used in the public interest. This issue touches on key aspects of how we live together as a society in the digital era.

We need a shared vision of how we will deal with data in the future. Our new publication "Data and Democracy" aims to find answers to this challenge and develops a proposal on how we should deal with data and the digital transformation in Europe in future. In doing so, the values of diversity, competence and participation must be given great importance and we should move directly into action.

The publication "Data and Democracy" was developed together with an interdisciplinary expert group within the framework of the Digital Europe 2030 project, building on the success of the earlier scenario-building process "The Public Sphere and Digital Sovereignty".

Read the publication here!

Using the instrument of strategic foresight, the experts systematically designed a desirable future scenario from which concrete options for action were derived in order to achieve the following goals:

• Improving access to digital infrastructure and the digital and media skills of citizens
• Creation of a pluralistic media landscape
• Raising digital competences in the administration to the same level as the economy
• Improving political participation through digitally enabled citizen participation
• Promoting the emergence of cooperative and sustainable digital ecosystems

The options derived from this desirable future scenario can help expand our thinking and inspire

anyone interested to take action themselves. It addresses issues such as public access to data and

infrastructure, the introduction of data-aided decision-making in government agencies, digitally facilitated civic participation and sustainable, climate-friendly digitalisation. At the end of the process, the project team worked with a sounding board to flesh out the preliminary results and rework them into the final version presented here.

The future scenario, basic assumptions and prerequisites for currently necessary political decisions and social developments as well as our concrete options for action for a democratic "Digital Europe 2030" can now be found in our publication "Data & Democracy".