Communication: Towards a thriving data-driven economy

The European Council's conclusions of October 2013 focused on the digital economy, innovation and services as drivers for growth and jobs. They called for EU action to provide the right framework conditions for a single market for big data and cloud computing.

A coordinated action plan involving Member States and the EU can guarantee the necessary scope and scale of the required activities, such as the building of world-class connectivity, storage and supercomputing capacities for data or the identification of areas of strategic importance for the Union where breakthroughs can be made.

By building upon ongoing sectoral activities already contributing to a data-driven economy, for example in the field of multimodal travel, this Communication seeks to initiate a debate with the Parliament, Council and other stakeholders, including the network of national digital coordinators on developing such an action plan. To steer this debate, this Communication describes the characteristics of a data-driven economy and outlines a set of initial actions to help bring it about in Europe.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)442: Follow the progress of this communication through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:442:FIN

ESO: Background information: Commission urges governments to embrace potential of Big Data http://www.europeansources.info/record/press-release-commission-urges-governments-to-embrace-potential-of-big-data/

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