Digital transformation will fundamentally affect all aspects of business and society, which makes it a key theme not only for business leaders and CIOs but also for governments. Over the past few years, several governments across Europe, as well as the European Union (EU) itself, have each developed their own respective initiative to address the opportunities and challenges that come with digital.

However, from the CIO’s perspective, these digital agendas often fail to meet the requirements that businesses encounter as part of their digital transformation projects. While the digital agendas emphasize infrastructure and regulatory initiatives such as broadband coverage and Net neutrality, CIOs and their business partners would also benefit also from a focus on “soft issues,” such as promoting an interdisciplinary approach in university education and driving digital innovation across industry sectors. We believe that:

  • Governments recognize the digital transformation of businesses and society . . . Governments across Europe, as well as the European Commission of the EU, have recognized the importance of digital transformation to their constituencies and citizens. Various digital agendas have been developed and rolled out over the past few years with great fanfare. But in the end, most digital agendas remain high-level discussion papers.
  • . . . but governments underestimate the magnitude of digital transformation. Most digital agendas lack any real insights about broader business requirements for being successful in the digital economy — let alone any technological insights. Digitization is treated like one of many initiatives rather than the overarching theme for business and society.
  • Businesses cannot expect great uplift from governments on their digital journeys — yet. Leading CIOs cannot rely on direction from government-sponsored digital agendas to tackle their digital transformation. Most government-sponsored initiatives contain only a few concrete targets and road maps for how to meet certain targets or milestones.

If you want to know more about digital agendas, you can either download the full report or contact us. Do you disagree with the above statements?