Pedro Sánchez announces 11-billion euro investment to boost digitalisation of SMEs and public authorities and strengthen digital skills

Moncloa Palace, Madrid

On Wednesday, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, presented at Moncloa Palace three key plans within the framework of the Digital Spain Agenda 2025: the National Digital Skills Plan, the Digitalisation of SMEs Plan 2021-2025 and the Digitalisation of the Public Authorities Plan.

These three strategic plans will be allocated a joint investment of 11 billion euros with the aim of enhancing digitalisation to increase productivity and economic growth, boost the creation of quality jobs and conquer foreign markets. As Pedro Sánchez stated during the event, "Spain's immediate future lies in the vaccine and defeating the pandemic, and then in the recovery and social, economic and administrative transformation, and this recovery will necessarily be a digital one".

As well as the President of the Government, the event to present these three digital plans was also attended by Nadia Calviño, Third Vice-President of the Government and Minister for Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation; Isabel Celaá, Minister for Education and Vocational Training; Manuel Castells, Minister for Universities; Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the EU; Juan Manuel Serrano, Chairman of Correos; Gerardo Cuerva, President of CEPYME; Pepita Martín, CEO of We Are Knitters; and Hadi Partovi, CEO of the organisation code.org, among other leading personalities in the digital world.

Nadia Calviño highlighted that public-private collaboration will be fundamental in the digital world. "Public investments are a lever to mobilise significant investments that the private sector will address in the coming years and which will allow us to transform our economy", she explained.

National Digital Skills Plan

Pool Moncloa/Fernando Calvo43% of the Spanish population lack basic digital skills and the participation of women who are specialists in information technologies remains at a standstill. Accordingly, the National Digital Skills Plan is aligned around four main lines of action: cross-cutting digital skills, the digital transformation of education, digital skills for employment and digital skills for professionals.

This Plan provides for public reforms and investments to the sum of 3.75 billion euros and its goals are to guarantee digital inclusion, to reduce the digital gap between men and women, to guarantee the digitalisation of education, promote the acquisition of the digital skills of the unemployed and of workers, increase the number of ICT specialists and promote the necessary digital skills of companies.

Digitalisation of SMEs Plan 2021-2025

The Digitalisation of SMEs Plan 2021-2025 is set up with a budget of 4.66 billion euros with a direct impact in the form of digitalisation subsidies of 4.46 billion euros. In order to address the Plan, five main lines of action have been defined: basic digitalisation for SMEs, support for managing change to promote business training for executives in digital skills, enhancing disruptive innovation and entrepreneurship, support for sector digitalisation, with special focus on industry, tourism and trade, and a line of action on coordination and efficiency.

The aim is to ensure that this Plan can reach 1.5 million SMEs, half of all SMEs in Spain.

Digitalisation of Public Authorities Plan 2021-2025

Pool Moncloa/Fernando CalvoThe Digitalisation of the Public Authorities Plan seeks to ensure that Spain can gain further ground in the development of e-government to respond to citizens' needs in a faster and more effective fashion. Furthermore, digitalisation in this field is crucial because the public authorities act on a support basis and as a lever to the major transformations and needs of the country.

This Plan provides for a raft of public reforms and investments with an allocation of 2.6 billion euros. For its development, three main lines of action have been established which in turn are broken down into 17 measures. The first is the digital transformation of the public authorities, the second includes guiding policies on digitalisation affecting such areas as health and justice, and the third main line of action revolves around the digital transformation and modernisation of the Ministry of Territorial Policy, autonomous regions and local authorities.

Non official translation