Why is it relevant to tourism?
The Digital Europe work programme shapes and supports the digital transformation of Europe’s society and economy. Its goal is to support the strategic autonomy of the EU’s single market.
The Digital Europe programme reinforces critical digital capacities by focusing on the key areas of artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, advanced computing, data infrastructure, and governance and processing. It also assists their deployment and best use in sectors like energy and the environment, manufacturing, agriculture and health. The programme provides strategic support for the digital transformation of the EU industrial ecosystems.
Multi-annual work programmes help implement Digital Europe. There are four independent work programmes. Two cover parts under indirect management (high-performance computing and cybersecurity). The third focuses on the European digital innovation hubs. Finally, the fourth programme covers data, AI, cloud, Euro quantum communication infrastructure (QCI) and skills, in addition to all deployment actions. Digital Europe will ensure that activities within the various programmes synergise and complement each other.
The work programme distributes its 2023 budget of €392 million (in current prices) by allocating
- €113 million to support the deployment of common data spaces (including sectorial data spaces) and support cloud-to-edge infrastructure and services. This includes implementing the AI work-strand, with sectorial testing and experimentation facilities.
- €58 million for actions on advanced digital skills in key capacity areas through specialised education programmes and other actions.
- €60 million to support the Destination Earth initiative, including the core platform, data lake, and related digital twins.
- €86,8 million for deploying digital technologies, such as the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). This also includes a sectorial IT solutions for justice and consumers, building confidence in digital transformation and solution deployment for public services, and supporting Trans-European Services for Telematics between Administrations (TESTA).
- €10 million for a strategic digital technologies investment platform.
€22.7 million for supporting other programmes, including the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act IT systems. Assistance will also be provided for operating and updating the IT system for the EU Digital COVID Certificate standards and its specifications. Most of the programme’s activities require co-investments from the public and private sectors.
The relevant work programmes describe these co-investments in more detail.The EU recovery and resilience facility (RRF), along with contributions from EU, national and regional programmes, foresees several of these activities as significant parts of cross-border or multi-country projects (MCPs). Co-investments from the RRF can therefore contribute to implementing these projects
This programme supports the creation of data spaces, with three projects being particularly interesting for the tourism sector.
- Two coordination and support actions explore the governance of a future data space for tourism
- The European common data space for cultural heritage supports the digital transformation of Europe’s cultural heritage sector.
- The data space for mobility is key to tourism. So is interoperability. The data spaces for tourism, mobility, cultural heritage and others need to be interoperable.
Moreover, SMEs in the tourism sector can be supported by the network of European digital innovation hubs in their digital transformation.
Project Title: DATES – European Tourism Data Space
Description: This project explores approaches and options for deploying a secure and trusted tourism data space to ensure transparent control of data access, use and re-use.
DATES focuses on developing governance and business models. It recommends clear strategies on how to inspire and motivate all key tourism stakeholders to collaboratively build a powerful, interconnected tourism data space. This project is part of the preparatory work for the European Data Space for Tourism.
More informationProject Title: Data Space for Tourism
Description: The Data Space for Tourism shall enable all sector stakeholder groups (e.g. SMEs, governmental agencies, technology firms, and tourism entities at a national, regional, and local level) to share and access the data they require when they need it. This project is part of the preparatory work for the European Data Space for Tourism.
DATES and the Data Space are joint projects.
Total budget: €1.7 million
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