CITIZENS
People are at the heart of digital services and all classes and groups within the population should be equally taken into account. However, contacting the administrative agencies in person will remain an option.
It is important to apply recognised standards when implementing digital services – including cross-border ones – and for their use to be secure and authenticated thanks to ID Austria.
The digital transformation affects us as a society in almost all aspects of our lives. It therefore entails people acquiring and extending their digital skills as the basis for everyday situations in life and at work. Future developments in information and communication technology, the spread of broadband and artificial intelligence will make it essential for people to have basic digital skills so that they remain adaptable and able to connect.
Digital services are intended to help people in their daily lives and work. This requires innovative ideas, standards and state-of-the-art technology to help people, businesses and the administrative agencies.
In the Digitale Amt (Digital Office) app and oesterreich.gv.at website, Austria has a comprehensive online platform that enables its citizens to download information and conduct their official business from their computers or mobile devices, at any time and wherever they are. Users can perform a centralised, multi-platform full-text search on the Business Service Portal, Legal Information System and data.gv.at portals. And once users have logged on to oesterreich.gv.at, many other services become accessible with a single sign-on, such as the electronic mailbox "Mein Postkorb" (My Mailbox), the Family Bonus Plus calculator and the FinanzOnline, "Meine SV" (social security account) and JustizOnline portals.
Furthermore, all the services on oesterreich.gv.at are perfectly compatible with the Digitales Amt (Digital Office) app, which can be downloaded from app stores free of charge to smartphones and tablets, so it can be used at any time and from anywhere via ID Austria, using Face or Touch ID.
The Digital Skills Inititative for Austria
The aim of the interdepartmental Digital Skills Initiative (DKO) is for as many people in Austria as possible to have basic digital skills by 2030.
The initiative will result in high-quality teaching of basic digital skills to the general population and in various settings in their working and private lives.
Specific objectives in addition to building up basic digital skills include, for example, training more IT specialists and female IT specialists in particular, and promoting digital talent. A national reference framework is to be introduced so that digital skills can be measured and compared.
Digital skills in the EU context: the Digital Decade 2030
The EU's digitalisation strategy defines objectives and pathways for bringing about digital transformation in Europe by 2030.
With regard to Europe's Digital Decade (2020-2023), there are four main areas which will be of particular importance in the digital transformation: human capital, infrastructure, the use of digital technologies by businesses and digital public administration services.
The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) gathered data on the key indicators of Europe's digital performance between 2014 and 2022 and tracked the progress made by EU countries.
For DESI 2023, 20 of the 32 performance indicators were surveyed again. In 2023, Austria achieved above-average results for human capital, digitalisation in businesses and digital public administration services, and was most clearly above the EU-27 average for human capital and digital public administration services.
It is making above-average leaps forward in connection with fixed broadband networks (but there is still remedial work to do), and with the recruitment of ICT experts where there continue to be significant labour shortages. According to the rankings, Austria also still has remedial work to do in relation to ICT training, in the human capital category.
The DESI 2023 report is made available as a Dashboard.
