Slovenia - National Digital Decade strategic roadmap

The national strategic roadmap for the Digital Decade developed by the Government of Slovenia sets basic policies, measures, and activities that are meant to contribute to the achievement of digital goals and which the state will implement in the next decade as part of digital transformation efforts.

The report uses the data in the Digital Decade Report 2023 on the National Base Value of the Digital Decade Targets, the EU baseline value for Digital Decade Targets in 2023 and the EU target value for 2030. Only 50% of people aged 16-74 have at least basic digital skills, which is below the EU average of 54%. The gap with the EU average is even larger when it comes to above basic digital skills (20% compared with 26% at EU level). But the level of penetration of software and regular internet use are at par with the EU average. However, with regard to the gender balance, the share of women with at least basic digital skills is – as for the population in general - below the EU average.

The Roadmap for Slovenia consists of 4 chapters:

• Digital Skills
• Digital Infrastructure
• Digital Transformation of Businesses 
• Digitalisation of Public Services 

Priorities for the development of digital skills

In the strategy Digital Slovenia 2030, Slovenia aims at 60% of the population to have basic digital skills by 2025 and reach the EU target of 80% of the population by 2030. Slovenia is implementing several measures to build basic digital skills in the context of the Promotion of the Digital Inclusion Act. The level of digital skills of vulnerable groups is generally considerably lower than in the population in general, but in line with the EU average for vulnerable groups. A key measure to address this issue is the Promotion of Digital Inclusion Act. It aims to raise awareness of the benefits of digital skills and technologies and to strengthen understanding and use of them.  

With its Digital Education Action Plan, Slovenia lays out a comprehensive national programme in the area of digital education. The Plan aims to improve a number of points, including the digital skills of teachers and pupils, and fostering digital infrastructure, ecosystem and digital education. 

Slovenia is currently implementing several programmes and initiatives to address the need for a more digitally skilled workforce. To identify, forecast and meet labour market needs, Slovenia is putting into place a Platform for Competence Prediction. 

Measures addressing digital skills priorities

• Measure 1: Training of professionals and managers in education

• Measure 2: Strengthening the digital competences of employees in SMEs

• Measure 3: Strengthening digital competences for public administration employees

• Measure 4: Digital literacy of children and young people

• Measure 5: Digital literacy of the elderly in rural environments

• Measure 6: Digital literacy for adults

• Measure 7: Digi info photos

• Measure 8: Digitization of education at the primary, secondary and adult education levels - equipment

• Measure 9: Digitization of education at the primary, secondary and adult education level - applications and services

• Measure 10: Experimental and pilot projects - for RIN

• Measure 11: Promotion of Digital Inclusion Act

• Measure 12: Digital literacy according to the train the trainer concept

• Measure 13: Management and digital strategy of individual institutions in the field of education

• Measure 14: Development and verification of computational thinking

• Measure 15: Training of higher education teachers and professional colleagues using ICT

• Measure 16: Provision of ICT/infrastructure for use in the educational process in the field of higher education

Key challenges to overcome

Shortage of ICT professionals in Slovenia are one of the main challenges to successful digital transformation of the economy and society. ICT professionals are needed by both the ICT industry and (larger) companies from other industries and, of course, the public sector. They are one of the main pillars of digital development, which is why Slovenia's goal is to increase the number of ICT experts from the current 4.5% to 10% by 2030 and to increase the percentage of women employed in ICT.