Digital transformation has become a key element in today’s business and social models. Not the future, no, the times when we talked about this paradigm shift as a bet for the future are gone, today the adoption of technology as a basic substrate for management is no longer an option, it is a necessity .
Both companies and public administrations are very aware of this, and consequently, have been immersed in digitization for years, in a process of change that involves all its operations and activities, but that puts a very specific focus on services. To its clients / users in the case of private companies, and to the general public in the case of public ones.
This model of change, which is generally quite positive, nevertheless faces a problem that can hinder its implementation, and for which there is no simple solution. We are talking, of course, about the digital divide, and de how it can weigh down the efforts carried out in this regard, making the total digitization of processes impossible, or access to them by those who do not have the necessary digital training to use them normally.
The arrival of the coronavirus has meant, on the one hand, a huge boost in the adoption of digital transformation. The impossibility of carrying out an endless number of operations in person, has maximized the deployment of its non-face-to-face alternatives, in which digital tools are the clearest alternative. And this is, without a doubt, one of the few positive consequences that we can extract from the pandemic.
However, this emergence has also brought with it an inevitable consequence: the growth of the digital divide, a problem that, as we can see in this IDG report, in Europe has a figure that cannot leave us indifferent: More than 30% of EU citizens have little or no digital skills. Three out of ten citizens therefore face problems when trying to access digital services, whether they are from public administrations or from companies of all types and conditions.
At this point it is important to clarify that, when we speak of the digital divide, we are not referring to ignorance about the specific operation of a certain service, but to lack of knowledge and skills necessary to function fluently in digital environments, either on computers, smartphones or any other type of electronic device.
This is more worrying when learning, from the same report, that only 35% of public sector organizations develop institutional programs for this sector of the citizenry that does not have the necessary digital skills to be able to adapt without problems to this new paradigm. In other words, we cannot count on that 30% being re-trained for this purpose.
Therefore, if we offer any type of service that, potentially, any citizen should be able to access, whether or not they have digital training, it is up to us to take the necessary measures to facilitate the same as much as possible. An objective in which, without a doubt, the adoption of a cloud-based strategy will be of great help to us.
Digital divide vs cloud
In such a complex environment, in which we also find ourselves with the problem of the lack of professionals in the IT sector, more and more public and private institutions have tackled the leap to the cloud as a solution to many of the problems they have had to deal with in the last year and a half.
And what are these companies looking for in the cloud? Security, flexibility, speed and reduced ICT costs.
The deployment of new services, traditionally, has always been associated with the provision of expensive and complex resources, in a calculation by estimation that, as a general rule, can never be so precise that the investment made fits like a glove to the demand for the service once deployed. That is to say, For safety reasons, costs have always been assumed above what would be necessary, also making the deployment somewhat more complex and, therefore, slow.
With the adoption of the cloud, we immediately leave behind all these limiting factors and that, in turn, also limit the subsequent evolution of said services. Thus, today we can find many services put into operation years ago, but that have been unable to adapt and improve their accessibility and usability. Something that is undoubtedly influenced by the complexity of these changes, but which in turn means that these services are not suitable for people without digital training.
The services, today, must offer universal accessibility, be able to adapt very quickly to as many changes as necessary, do it in a safe way and, this is fundamental, take those users into account that, due to their lack of contact with new technologies, can face a problem whenever they need to make use of them.
Only the cloud offers, today, the flexibility to adapt to that prevailing need. A cloud-based strategy enables us to offer universally accessible services, which are adapted to the needs of each user and which, therefore, do not represent a hindrance in the advancement of digital transformation.
The European public sector, as you can see in the report, hsubstantially accelerated cloud adoption, in a trend that is only going up, and that will continue for the next few years. Companies must follow the same path, as they face a similar casuistry in relation to the digital divide, and their future depends directly on being able to reach that 30% of users who, today, are not capable of bridging the gap.
