Carme Artigas (Vilassar de Mar, 1968), Secretary of State for Digitization and Artificial Intelligence, has made an intense two-day visit to Euskadi this week. A journey organized by the Government Delegation in the Basque Country that has taken him through the three territories and in which he has seen first-hand the latest bets in the community on issues such as cybersecurity, data management applied to the industry , quantum computing or artificial intelligence itself. Artigas gets a very good impression from this busy schedule and, above all, he confesses the idea that the degree of collaboration between the different agents (public and private) that prevails here is something worth “exporting” to the rest of Spain .
–Being secretary of state for digitization is like being everything. It’s the buzzword in the world removing the Covid, of course…
–(Smiles) It is great news that you tell me that, because before I arrived, this Secretary of State did not exist, because it was not a national priority. Now we talk about digitization and artificial intelligence and, moreover, in the Ministry of Economy. And if this cabinet does something different, it is precisely to understand digitalization within the entire economy, all sectors and the entire society.
–Are we aware of the importance of this in terms of risk and opportunity?
–The pandemic has helped a lot to visualize something that did not go with me before or that only corresponded to the large company or to the technology sector itself. Something that did not affect my SME. Thanks to digitization and technology we have seen that even in a pandemic we can communicate and work. It has valued what we already knew was important and now people know is urgent. Maintaining a good standard of living will depend a lot on how we make this transition.
Future
“Maintaining a good standard of living will depend on how we make the digital transition”
–What relative position does Spain occupy in this area?
–According to the European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index, we have gone from position 11 to 9 in two years. And we are the only one among the large economies in the Top 10. We are very, very good in broadband connectivity wide (the second country in the world), in 5G and in Digital Administration, although it has many areas for improvement. But there are two issues that weigh us down, in which we are well below the European average and to which this year we have put a very urgent focus with the Digital Spain 2025 plan.
-Which are?
–The lack of digitization of SMEs and the lack of digital skills. The first is a tremendously urgent issue to resolve. We have three million SMEs, 99% of our business fabric and 70% of employment. And 80% are micro-SMEs, with less than five workers.
-That is the prevailing trend in the Basque Country…
-Yes, although I think the average size is somewhat larger. If there is something that you do here very, very well, and that I take as a model everywhere I go, it is the ability to collaborate and work as a network. Here you can be small to be big because you join the network. In every place I have visited there was an association behind it, a park…
–Are you referring to Basque public-private collaboration?
–The public-private and the public-public and the private-private. I have seen everything. The deployment of recovery funds will only be possible with this collaboration. And all with the message that no one is left behind.
-You say it for SMEs, right?
-Of course! In the pandemic, online sales have grown by 50%, for example in textiles, but that has not reached SMEs. It has to be corrected. That is why the ‘Digital Kit’, which represents 3,000 million to digitize a million SMEs.
–What photo do you take of Euskadi?
-The Basque Country is undoubtedly one of the great poles of our country. I have been able to verify that the digital transformation is underway in all sectors.
–He has visited the BSC, the BAIC, the DIPC, and the headquarters of Vicomtech. And he has been with the Basque Government, Ikerlan, Tecnalia, the CFM, the UPV, the BRTA, Euskaltzaindia… he has been with everyone!
-Getting out of the office for two days is an Asian luxury, but the truth is that everything looks much better on the ground. They have set up an agenda for us with many very interesting meetings. There was a lot of gray matter concentrated there. I have to say that a set of investments from the recovery fund of 548 million have been launched here, between money for direct management of the community and agreements and subsidies.
Basque Country
«The degree of cooperation between agents in the Basque Country is something that I take as a model»
-In any case, the Basque industrial SME still sees digitization as far away…
-It is that we have to do the short, the medium term and the immediate at the same time. If you do not invest today in digitization, artificial intelligence or computing, you will not be able to do it later. You won’t have time anymore. There will be other countries that have been better placed.
– And the talent? And the professionals of this new world?
-Everyone I’ve visited has told me about the problem of talent. We are being a focus for attracting talent. And this is a global dynamic. The countries and regions that are capable of attracting talent will win. We are very aware. I have promoted the ‘Start up’ Law, one of whose main elements is to favor the repatriation of professionals and the visa of digital nomads. You are no longer going to work where the company is, but the company is going to come where you are. Thanks to technology you can work from Gipuzkoa to anywhere in the world.
-That attraction should be combined with training, right?
-Effectively. That is why the National Plan for Digital Competences has 4,500 million euros, of which a good part goes to the Ministry of Education and from there, to the autonomous communities, which are the ones that have the competence. In this sense, the reform of Vocational Training is one of the most important reforms in the country in recent times.
– Is there a risk that people will be left ‘hung’ by the arrival of the digital universe in the company?
-Here in Euskadi, the truth is, I see very little problem of people being left hanging. We also have an opportunity for ‘skilling’ and ‘reskilling’. And it is that jobs as we know them today are going to change.
– Continuous training?
–It is very important. We have to preserve the employability of people. It is just as important to help those who do not have a job to equip themselves with skills as it is for those who already have a job to update their skills.
Small company
“The lack of digitization of SMEs is a tremendously urgent issue to be resolved”
– And in the industry?
–The entire industry is moving towards the data economy. When there was the first wave of digitization, we were looking the other way because of the 2008 crisis and the priority was to save the sector. But now we are very clear that the reconstruction involves introducing digitization in all processes.
–What is the relative position of the Basque Country in this challenge?
I see it very early. People are very clear about what situation they are in and the role of digitization. It’s all about sharing data and developing intelligence from that data. This is the framework of the European initiative Gaia-X (a public-private alliance to develop a data storage and cloud computing infrastructure in favor of digital sovereignty against the United States).
-Spain leads the health and tourism section of that alliance…
-Yes, but we also want to lead the industry. We have had a workshop on this in Euskadi, because of decentralizing and not doing everything in Madrid. I see the company very aware and the Administration, too.
–And ethics? How to include it in the commitment to digitization?
-One of my obsessions is that this transition is not made at any price or excluding anyone. The big bet is the humanistic digital transformation. Europe is the only place in the world that is putting limits on technological development.