NATIONAL DIGITAL STRATEGY FIRST STEP TO TRULY DIGITAL SOCIETY - KENNY

Posted on July 11, 2013 2:36 PM   |   Permanent Link   

Dublin Bay North Labour TD and member of the Oireachtas Communications Committee Sean Kenny has welcomed the launch of the Government's National Digital Strategy 'Doing More with Digital'.

"The launch of this strategy marks the beginning of a 'whole of government' approach to digital technology - which is a pervasive economic and social force. Digital technology is shaping Ireland's future at a very fast rate."

"The National Digital Strategy is an important first step in broadening our focus from solely looking at digital connectivity to creating a vision and building momentum on adopting digital technologies in society. This can only be done by bringing together different public and private sector activities in the digital domain. Governments tend to focus on the engineering side of the internet - building out the hardware. We need to focus more on demand - why are 20% of the population not on-line? Why are so many small businesses not set up for e-commerce? The Government is going to focus on these questions and this is something I warmly welcome."

"New research commissioned as part of the National Digital Strategy shows that digital technology now supports 95,000 jobs. It means that in jobs terms, industries surrounding digital technologies have become as big an industry in Ireland as agriculture, forestry and fishing and just shy of financial services in terms of scale. The research also demonstrates that the relative importance of digital is growing at 16% per year; that is around 10 times the rate of growth of the rest of the economy and I think this is very significant."

"Ireland's future will be more influenced than ever by digital. For the vast majority of jobs of all types digital skills will be a basic prerequisite. The skills required are readily achieved, but to ensure everyone has access to them we need to actively connect those without skill to those with skill. The digital economy provides new challenges and demands for our workforce and it is for this reason that the NDS will be spearheading digital education programs both for our youngest citizens and our older on-liners. Across Europe only 1 job in 10 will not need a digital skill by 2015. In much the same way that knowledge of how to use a telephone is of critical importance in the modern workplace, knowledge of how to perform a variety of tasks online will only grow in importance in the next decade. Cooperation across government has enabled 100Mbps broadband to be made available to every second level school in the country. This is the foundation for developing a range of interventions which will support schools and teachers learning from each other and sharing best practice, ultimately facilitating young people using digital technology and content to learn."