The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania,

emphasising the importance of digital sovereignty to Lithuania as a modern country of the future in the context of global changes and global trends,

highlighting that digital sovereignty may help Lithuania to safeguard its national economic and security interests,

taking into account the scope for contributing to the implementation of the Communication COM(2021) 118 of 9 March 2021 from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions entitled ‘2030 Digital Compass: the European way for the Digital Decade’,

underlining that digital literacy is a kind of mindset and approach rather than merely a set of skills encompassing access to technologies and ability for critical assessment and effective action in a constantly changing digital environment,

stressing that the key driving force and objectives of digital transformation are full optimisation of societal experience, promptitude and innovation, as well as creation of new sources of income and data-informed value ecosystems,

acknowledging that digital transformation means not only technological transformation, but also is related to global socio-economic transformations and strategic reforms in key areas of national life and governance against the backdrop of global trends,

noting that digital solutions and new technologies are not an end in themselves but a means of responding to the changing needs of society in a timely manner,

emphasising that consolidation of infrastructure of information resources and information technologies in the national digital space is unique in nature and requires high level digital skills, wide use of digital technologies, and leadership in dealing with risks, threats and challenges to ensure national digital sovereignty,

highlighting that considerable attention must be devoted to the development of semantic infrastructure and its interaction with a multicultural and multilingual context, as well as to the rapid development of infrastructure programmes of semantic technologies and language technologies,

noting that the state must assume new roles in restructuring and modernising regional policy, urban governance, and sustainable development of cultural, creative, human and ecological capital,

confirming its support for science-based development of digital transformation of public administration,

considering the contribution of digital competences, solutions and technologies as a generator of multi-level governance transformations to the development of an inclusive, participatory, open and transparent public sector;

recalling that services based on digital data can offer solutions to the contemporary challenges related to health, demography, mobility, climate and the fourth industrial revolution Industry 4.0 and contribute to a timely response to societal needs,

stressing that the human factor is essential at all levels of digitalisation and at all stages of digital transformation,

acknowledging that digital transformation is the transition to the new social model Society 5.0 and digital technologies are an important strategic national resource of the country,

emphasising that the purpose of Lithuania’s digital transformation is the transition from ad hoc application to consistent development and introduction of digital technologies,

recognising that digital transformation and the fourth industrial revolution Industrial 4.0 inevitably change the future of work,

expressing the understanding that digitisation is not only a separate sector of the economy but also the basis for the national social and economic life as a whole and the place of the country in the global world,

highlighting the need to move towards a digital economy by ensuring scientific, technological and national sovereignty in the digital environment, creating conditions for the innovation economy and prioritising knowledge-intensive services,

expressing concern that, despite the implementation of digitisation policy, the country has no real agenda for the digitisation of the public sector,

noting that smooth, sustainable and efficient consolidation of public infrastructure and information resources is a precondition for enhancing the equivalent efficiency of digitisation of regional, non-governmental and private political, economic and cultural entities and improving synergies, coordination of action, and effectiveness of inter-institutional cooperation,

expressing concern that the consolidation of the national information technology infrastructure fails to progress smoothly due to the lack of human resources and incentives for institutions to participate in this process,

underlining the need to take into account the improvement of data protection systems (including technical, economic and security aspects) throughout the existing and new life cycle of digital technologies as an integral part of the national security system,

noting that the digital future of Lithuania will depend on competences and capabilities to take advantage of the opportunities created by wider diffusion of digital innovations in various sectors of public administration,

expressing strong political positions on key initiatives for future digital transformation and digital sovereignty in Lithuania:

regarding the visionary aspirations in the National Progress Strategy ‘Lithuania 2050’:

urges the Government of the Republic of Lithuania to develop, alongside the National Progress Strategy ‘Lithuania 2050’, a national roadmap for the digital Lithuania, which would reflect the national multi-annual strategic guidelines for digital decades, including the current one, securing data sovereignty and operational sovereignty in the European Union (EU) area as well as technological sovereignty in the EU and NATO area, with a focus on the ability of the country’s systems and critical infrastructure to continue to operate even in the face of large-scale disruptions or attacks;

regarding a special focus on the digital transformation of education:

calls on the Government to address urgently the challenges related to digital education, modern and integrated digital content, digital skills, and analytics with a view to, by 2025:

1) achieving at least 85% internet use among the Lithuanian population (82% in 2020) and 95% high-speed internet use among enterprises (84.9% in 2020);

2) ensuring basic digital skills for 70% of adults (56% in 2020);

3) achieving the average (13th) place by Lithuania in the European Human Capital Index ranking (19th place in 2019);

4) making that the education content would systematically integrate the development of competences in supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cyber security, high-level digital skills and the use of digital technologies;

5) preparing and implementing  educational and/or scientific initiatives and/or programmes necessary for the creation of taxonomy of skills and competences of various data management specialists and/or professional groups by developing areas of data science;

6) focusing efforts and initiating the training of professionals and analysts, who will be able to meet the interests of the state in future, and professionals, who are in demand on the labour market;

regarding the transition to a real-time economy:

proposes that the Government create a digital ecosystem enabling citizens, businesses and the public sector to exchange data in real or near real time, rather than ‘digitised documents’, and to move towards electronic invoicing, electronic billing, electronic receipts and virtual cash registers by 2025;

regarding prioritisation of digital solutions:

calls on the Government:

1) by 2025, to introduce a one-stop shop by connecting the websites of individual public bodies used for the provision of e-public services and allowing access to all e-services on a single website; when digitising such services, to apply a common model and infrastructure of e-public services by integrating the delivery of multiple public services, ensuring better coordination within and between levels of government and focusing on a comprehensive, user-friendly service based on life events and business life cycle;

2) to reinforce prioritisation of digital solutions following the legal regulation;

3) to base the digitisation and opening up of data on high ethical and security standards;

regarding development of participatory democracy:

calls on the Government:

1) as part of the overall commitment on the future digitisation of the country, to initiate effective public communication and education aimed at the public to highlight the benefits of democratic processes in the digital space, to critically assess the risks involved, and to raise the profile of the tools developed;

2) to increase transparency and engagement of citizens in political life through the deployment of interoperable digital platforms based on open standards and technical specifications, application interfaces and common data models;

3) to achieve that at least 40% of the population participate in e-democracy processes in the digital space by 2025 (20% in 2020);

regarding digitisation in public governance:

calls on the Government to make an immediate inventory of the digitisation process to date, draw up legal acts and develop processes to ensure that the public sector has rapid and widespread access to the data and analytical tools necessary for quality decision-making;

proposes that the Government entrust the implementation of all horizontal digitisation decisions in the country to the Lithuanian Digital Transformation Manager who will provide leadership in the design, deployment, implementation and development of multi-level management of the national information resources, and will regularly report to the Seimas on the digital progress related to the global information resources;

proposes that the Government entrust the Government’s Chief Data Officer to oversee the strategic coordination of data science and data management in Lithuania, including areas such as artificial intelligence and open data;

calls on the Government to make every effort to ensure appropriate and timely resources for digital transformation in public administration at all levels;

calls on the Government to deliver interoperable, personalised, user-friendly public services at all levels of public administration;

recommends that the Government design the architecture of public information resources in such a way as to ensure exponential growth of the public information resources infrastructure and to address the issues of limited space of data centres, incompatibility of non-interoperable information resources and information technology systems;

regarding an open State:

calls on the Government to achieve by 2025:

1) at least 70% of businesses re-use information from state and municipal institutions and agencies for their commercial activities (56% in 2019);

2) at least 90% of agencies have made an inventory of the data they hold and established a procedure for opening up data (5% in 2016);

proposes to the Government:

1) to ensure the development of a data architecture and infrastructure that meets global standards, taking into account, in the concepts for the implementation of the data lake, the different architectural aspects of this formation, such as infrastructure, data storage, data flows, data modelling, data organisation, data processes, metadata management, data security and privacy and data quality;

2) to improve the overall coordination and cooperation between the institutions involved in the consolidation process at horizontal level;

3) to establish the highest level of technical and organisational security measures or other risk-based solutions for copies of critical data;

recommends that the Government:

1) strengthen international cooperation to maximise the benefits of knowledge sharing and coordination of international digitisation processes;

2) assess the potential of open source to reduce the public sector’s total cost of ownership, while also increasing its digital autonomy;

regarding a common document on Lithuania’s digital future:

undertakes to establish a national agreement on Lithuania’s digital policy, expressing the political parties’ unity in developing the direction of the national digital initiatives and agreeing on the implementation of a sustainable digitised reality;

regarding parliamentary scrutiny:

undertakes to actively exercise parliamentary scrutiny and carry out assessment of progress in the development of the national digital ecosystem, consolidation of information resources, and information technology infrastructure.

 

Speaker of the Seimas                                                                              Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen