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Shaping Europe’s digital future
News article | Foilseachán

DigitalYou- Digital Life

Digitising the interaction with and between public organisations helps to reduce administrative burden and to make the service faster, cheaper and more tailored to the users. Digital can simplify interactions with public authorities and improve the quality of public services.

Digital Life

Digital Life - How digital services can improve your life

One of the major simplifications is the “once only” principle. As an example, when changing your residence or registering the birth of a child, you should be able to provide the information to the public authority only once. It is estimated that extending this “once only” approach to the EU level could result in annual net savings of as much as €5 billion per year.

  • eIDAS - electronic identification and trust services to enable secure and seamless electronic interactions between businesses, citizens and public authorities

With eIDAS, the EU has managed to lay down the right foundations and a predictable legal framework for people, companies (in particular SMEs) and public administrations to safely access to services and do transactions online and across border in just "one click".

  • eHealth - secure acccess to health data across borders; personalised medicine; empowered patients

Another area where digitalisation can improve the service is the health sector. Digital technologies can enable domestic care, remote assistance by medical professionals, the design and test of new medical products and provide faster diagnosis, better and personalised treatment plans. Making the health care system more sustainable as a result. The Commission also set out a plan of action that puts citizens first when it comes to their health information: citizens should be able to access their health information and share it across borders if they want to.

  • Digital Skills - A skills agenda to bridge the digital skills deficit

Within the Digital Single Market strategy, the European Commission published a Skills Agenda for Europe, working together to strengthen human capital, employability and competitiveness. It presents a number of actions and initiatives with the ambition to tackle the digital skills deficit in Europe. The Digital Economy and Society Index publishes the annual progress of Member States in a number of key digital indicators.  

The 29 signatory countries of a Letter of Intent signed at Digital Day 2017 agreed to designate 5G cross-border corridors, where vehicles can physically move across borders and where the cross-border road safety, data access, data quality and liability, connectivity and digital technologies can be tested and demonstrated.

The European Commission's ambition is to focus on these corridors in future EU automated driving projects in the area of digital policies, with links to cybersecurityprivacy5Ginternet of thingsdata economyfree flow of data, etc.