DigitalHQ's Project Director, Eoin Costello, has been appointed to the Government's 'Enterprise Digital Advisory Forum'.
Eoin met with Minister Troy, who is leading the Forum as part of Ireland's new National Digital Strategy, at yesterday's inaugural meeting of the forum. Following a competitive call for expressions of interest 15 people were appointed to the new Forum including representatives from IBM, Google, Microsoft, Ibec, a number of Science Foundation Ireland funded academic centres focusing on AI and other business representative bodies.
Opening the first meeting of the Forum, Minister Troy outlined that he had brought together a group of experts to advise on how the Government can drive the digitalisation of business to achieve the goals contained in the new National Digital Strategy in particular that:
80% of businesses to have competent digital skills by 2030
75% of businesses to leverage cloud, AI and big data by 2030
He outlined that while Ireland are currently ranked 5th in the EU for digitalisation across our economy, he wants to work with the new Forum to build on this to ensure that Ireland is a leader in this area. This is why the National Digital Strategy uses the EU's Digital Compass framework (from the EU's Digital Decade strategy) as the guiding framework throughout the new strategy.
Yesterday's meeting focusses on what are the barriers to enterprises in Ireland digitalising, how do we overcome these barriers and what shape should Government support/funding for digitalisation take.
Eoin shared DigitalHQ's position that to reap the long term benefits of digitalisation small businesses (both traditional and innovation driven enterprises, B2C and B2B), and the towns they are located in, need to be considered as a whole. He outlined the work of DigitalHQ in this area, in particular our Digital Growth Mindset framework which can help small businesses leverage digital effectively.
Eoin also shared the insights that DigitalHQ believes can help increase the digitalisation of small businesses in Ireland which he outlined in his guest post for the European DIGITALSME Alliance, namely increased communication in an accessible way of the benefits of digitalisation (the Digital Exoskeleton) and a grassroots up approach to making resources and practical skills available in the localities where small businesses are located (the Digital Growth Hub model).
