EU Digital Economy and Society Index 2022

In the  2022 Digital Economy and Society Index , elaborated with data from 2021, Spain ranks 7th position among the 27 EU Member States. Thus, it advances two places with respect to the results obtained in 2021, placing ahead of Estonia, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Portugal and 14 other Member States.

This index classifies the EU countries according to their level of digitization and analyzes their progress in four areas: Human capital, Connectivity, Integration of digital technology and Digital public services. 

DESI 2022 highlights the improvement in results compared to previous years, especially with regard to the integration of digital technology (position 11, five positions better than in 2021), where it highlights that the percentage of SMEs with a basic level of digital intensity and that use social networks is higher than the EU average; human capital (ranked 10th vs. 12th in 2021), where it performs relatively well in basic digital skills; and in digital public services (position 5, two above 2021). Spain is one of the EU leaders in terms of connectivity, where it ranks 3rd for the second consecutive year and continues to make steady progress in the deployment of very high capacity networks and is carrying out reforms and strategic investments within the framework of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (MRR).

e-Government

Spain ranks 5th in the EU for digital public services, where it obtains 83,5 points, well above the EU average (67,3). This component of the report assesses five indicators: e-Government users, Pre-filled forms, Digital public services for citizens, Digital public services for businesses and Open data.

Indicators show a high level of online interaction between public authorities, citizens and business. 73% of Spanish online users engage actively with e-government services, compared with a 65% EU average. On the indicator for pre-filled forms (measuring the re-use of information across administrations to make life easier for individuals), Spain scored 78 points, well above the EU average of 64, thanks largely to the fact that the Spanish system does not request information from individuals that it can obtain through the Data Intermediation Platform. On digital public services for citizens, Spain scores 87 for citizens (against the EU average of 75) and 94 for business (against 82). Spain performs very well on the open data indicator, in which it occupies the third position among the EU countries, with a score of 95% (14 p.p. above the EU average).