Digital Economy and Society Index - DESI

  • Alexandre Mateus profile
    Alexandre Mateus
    24 February 2015 - updated 4 years ago
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The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) is a composite index that summarises relevant indicators on Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU member states in digital competitiveness.

These are the main findings of the Digital Economy and Society Index:

Digital experience depends on the country you are in – as performance varies from digital top players such as Denmark (0.68 digital performance score out of 1) to lower-performance countries such as Romania (0.31 digital performance score). Detailed information can be found in the country sheets.

A majority of Europeans use the Internet on a regular basis: 75% in 2014 (72% in 2013), ranging from 93% in Luxembourg to 48% in Romania.

- Europeans are eager to access audiovisual content online: 49% of Europeans who go online have played or downloaded games, images, films or music. 39% of households that have a TV watch video on demand.

Small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) face barriers with e-commerce: only 15% of SMEs sell online - and of that 15%, fewer than half do so across borders.

Digital public services are an everyday reality in some countries but almost non-existent in others: 33% of European Internet users have used online forms to send information to public authorities, ranging from 69% in Denmark to 6% in Romania. 26% of general practitioners in Europe use e-prescriptions to transfer prescriptions to pharmacists over the Internet, but this varies from 100% in Estonia to 0% in Malta.