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Europe's Digital Decade: Commission towards a digitally empowered Europe by 2030
The European Commission presents a vision, targets and avenues for a successful digital transformation of Europe by 2030. This is also critical to achieve the transition towards a climate neutral, circular and resilient economy. The EU's ambition is to be digitally sovereign in an open and interconnected world, and to pursue digital policies that empower people and businesses to seize a human centred, sustainable and more prosperous digital future. This includes addressing vulnerabilities and dependencies as well as accelerating investment.
To make the next years Europe's ‘Digital Decade'; responds to the European Council's call for a ‘Digital Compass'; and builds on the Commission's digital strategy of February 2020. The Communication proposes to agree on a set of digital principles, to rapidly launch important multi-country projects, and to prepare a legislative proposal setting out a robust governance framework, to monitor progress – the Digital Compass.
Europe's Digital Compass: The Commission proposes a Digital Compass to translate the EU?s digital ambitions for 2030 into concrete terms. They evolve around four cardinal points:
- Digitally skilled citizens and highly skilled digital professionals: By 2030, at least 80% of all adults should have basic digital skills, and there should be 20 million employed ICT.
- Secure, performant and sustainable digital infrastructures: By 2030, all EU households should have gigabit connectivity and all populated areas should be covered by 5G.
- Digital transformation of businesses: By 2030, three out of four companies should use cloud computing services, big data, and Artificial Intelligence.
- Digitalization of public services: By 2030, all key public services should be available online; all citizens will have access to their e-medical records; and 80% citizens should use an eID solution.
Highlights of The Cybersecurity Standardization Conference
The European Standards Organizations, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, joined forces with ENISA, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, to organize its annual conference virtually this year. The event, which took place from 2 to 4 February, attracted over 2000 participants from the EU and from around the world. The conference addressed standardization in relation to the Radio Equipment Directive (RED) and certification under the provisions of the Cybersecurity Act (CSA). The ultimate objective of the exercise is to enable an effective implementation of the Cybersecurity Act. The objectives of the presentations and key topics addressed by the conference panels were the following:
- Cybersecurity requirements and standardization activities under the scope of the Radio Equipment Directive
- Standardization supporting the Cybersecurity Act
- Developments on standardization in the area of Consumer IoT
- Standardization of 5G
The slides presented during the conference are available on the website of the Cybersecurity Standardization Conference.
European Commission, standards are crucial for European Climate Adaptation policy
On 24 February 2021 the European Commission adopted the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change, which is setting the pathway to prepare for the unavoidable impacts of climate change in Europe. The Commission clearly states in the strategy that they intend to “increase cooperation with standardization organisations to make sure that existing standards are climate-proof and to develop new ones for climate adaptation solutions”.
CEN and CENELEC support the European effort to mitigate climate change, an also the preparation for its unavoidable consequences. Since the publication of the first EU adaptation strategy in 2013, CEN and CENELEC have been working closely with the European Commission on climate proofing the key infrastructures by revising the relevant priority standards. The first set of standards that include adaptation solutions from various sectors are being now finalised.
In addition to the extension of the activities of the CEN-CENELEC Adaptation to Climate Change Coordination Group, at the end of 2020 the new CEN/TC 467 ‘Climate Change’ was also established with the objective to develop European standards in support of the EU policy objectives. This clearly indicates the importance of climate change in the European standardization. An overview of CEN and CENELEC’s activities to support the efforts to mitigate climate change can be found on the policy paper “Standards in support of the European Green Deal Commitments”
ETSI Report Paves the Way for First World Standards in Securing Artificial Intelligence
The ETSI Securing Artificial Intelligence Industry Specification Group (SAI ISG) released its first Group Report, ETSI GR SAI 004, which gives an overview of the problem statement regarding the securing of AI. ETSI SAI is the first standardization initiative dedicated to securing AI.
The Report describes the problem of securing AI-based systems and solutions, with a focus on machine learning, and the challenges relating to confidentiality, integrity and availability at each stage of the machine learning lifecycle. It also points out some of the broader challenges of AI systems including bias, ethics and ability to be explained. A number of different attack vectors are outlined, as well as several cases of real-world use and attacks.
To identify the issues involved in securing AI, the first step was to define AI. For the ETSI group, artificial intelligence is the ability of a system to handle representations, both explicit and implicit, and procedures to perform tasks that would be considered intelligent if performed by a human. This definition still represents a broad spectrum of possibilities. However, a limited set of technologies are now becoming feasible, largely driven by the evolution of machine learning and deep-learning techniques, and the wide availability of the data and processing power required to train and implement such technologies.