About
Digital transformation can benefit the 2030 UN Agenda, but requires improved governance, digital skills, and increased citizen participation to prevent disparities. In Portugal, the shift to a digital society is a key policy goal, with strategic objectives focusing on digital inclusion, business transformation, and modernizing public administration.
Aligned with these goals, the Thematic Line 5 supports Portugal's digital transition, emphasizing the importance of training, digital inclusion, and the adoption of new technologies in business and government. This transformation also opens new possibilities for addressing complex issues like climate change, energy transition, and urban planning through open data and AI-driven solutions.
Digital Tranformation
and Public Policies
THEMATIC LINE 5
Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Citizens Trust
The growing use of AI and machine learning has increased concerns about complex algorithms using big data, producing unfair or biased outcomes that can compromise citizens’ confidence and social cohesion and even manipulate democratic processes. This objective intends to contribute to the ethical use of AI and data by the public administration to create trust, transparency, and resilience in governance, aligning with the EU AI Act.
Digital Transformation of Business
Digital transformation significantly influences business, revolutionizing customer value delivery, boosting productivity and performance with innovation, and presenting various opportunities and challenges. This shift disrupts traditional business and social models, affecting citizen lives and market dynamics. Addressing these changes requires developing informed digital policy responses in areas like competition, taxation, and trade. The objective focuses on deepening understanding of digital transformation’s effects on businesses, particularly SMEs, and shaping public policies to effectively respond to these evolving digital landscapes.
Digital Transformation of Public Administration
Society and economy’s digital transformation is reshaping public service delivery, elevating citizens’ expectations. Governments must effectively capture, map, understand and incorporate citizens’ needs and demands into public service design and delivery using digital solutions. This objective focuses on enhancing comprehension of such transformations and their effects on public policy design and delivery. It aims to aid decision-making and boost governance capacities, ensuring a citizen-centric approach in an increasingly digital landscape.
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Main objectives
Digital Literacy for an Inclusive Digital Society
The digital transformations underway in contemporary societies have profound implications for different dimensions of social life. A key area addressed by this objective, is the skills and competencies of citizens to face the multiple challenges and opportunities in a society marked not only by digital transformation but also by profound social changes and inequalities (such as ageing or structural unemployment).
Digital Transformation of Public Administration
Digital transformations should embrace the universal values of science and education. Digital transformation/AI poses several challenges to the production, distribution, and implementation of scientific knowledge, and the way higher education needs to incorporate new pedagogical models and deal with students who are deeply immersed in the tools that the digital society offers. Having this in mind, public policies need to find solutions for these challenges, for building better societies, economies, and welfare.