Taking Portugal to the Top of Europe on Digital Competencies
The Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, was interviewed by the weekly newspaper Expresso ahead of the launch of the “Digital Competencies National Initiative e.2030” (Portugal INCoDe.2030), scheduled for April 3, in Lisbon.
Ensuring “digital literacy and inclusion for the full exercise of citizenship”, encouraging “specialization in digital technologies and applications” to qualify human resources and make the economy more competitive, and “produce new scientific knowledge” through international cooperation, are the three objectives of the “Digital Competencies National Initiative e.2030” (Portugal INCoDe.2030), which will be launched on April 3 in Lisbon.
In the interview, published both online and in print, Manuel Heitor states the role of the international partnerships: “We have to increase international collaboration and we are reformulating the partnerships that Portugal has with three American universities (MIT, Carnegie Mellon and University of Texas at Austin) and guiding them even more towards digital growth. The fastest-growing Portuguese-based companies are precisely born of these partnerships, which are strategic for reaching the “Big Five”: Amazon, Goola, Microsoft, Apple and IBM.”
For now, there are 33 measures and actions aimed at achieving the goals of all homes in Portugal with Internet access in 2030, about 90% of the population frequently using the Internet, and 80% of the Portuguese people with basic digital skills or more, reaching over 250 thousand higher education graduates between the ages of 20 and 29 in the ICT area, 80% of employees using computers with internet connection in the workplace and 90% of national consumers using the internet to access electronic banking .
Read the Portuguese interview at Expresso Online, Expresso (PDF version) (April 1, 2017)
