1.1.2. Rationale and Union added value

ICT underpins innovation and competitiveness across a broad range of private and public markets and sectors, and enables scientific progress in all disciplines. Over the next decade, the transformative impact of digital technologies and ICT components, infrastructures and services will be increasingly visible in all areas of life. Computing, communication and data storage resources will continue to spread over the coming years. Vast amounts of information and data, including real-time, will be generated by sensors, machines and information-enhanced products, making action at a distance commonplace, enabling global deployment of business processes and sustainable production sites allowing the creation of a wide range of services and applications. Many critical commercial and public services and all key processes of knowledge production in science, learning, business and the culture and creative sector as well as the public sector will be provided, and thus made more accessible, through ICT. ICT will provide the critical infrastructure for production and business processes, communication and transactions. ICT will also be indispensable in contributing to key societal challenges, as well as to societal processes such as community formation, consumer behaviour, political participation and public governance, for example by means of social media and collective-awareness platforms and tools. It is crucial to support and integrate research which takes a user-centred perspective in order to develop competitive solutions. The Union support to ICT research and innovation makes a significant contribution to the development of the next generation technologies and applications as it makes up a large part of total spending on collaborative, mid-to-high risk R&I in Europe. Public investment in ICT research and innovation at Union level has been and remains essential to mobilise the critical mass leading to breakthroughs and to a wider uptake and better use of innovative solutions, products and services. It continues to play a central role in developing open platforms and technologies applicable across the Union, in testing and piloting innovations in real pan-European settings and in optimising resources when addressing Union competitiveness and tackling common societal challenges. Union support to ICT research and innovation is also enabling hi-tech SMEs to grow and capitalise on the size of Union-wide markets. It is strengthening collaboration and excellence amongst Union scientists and engineers, reinforcing synergies with and between national budgets, and acting as a focal point for collaboration with partners outside Europe. Successive evaluations of ICT activities in the Seventh Framework Programme have shown that focused ICT research and innovation investment undertaken at Union level has been instrumental in building industrial leadership in areas like mobile communications and safety-critical ICT systems, and to address challenges like energy-efficiency, health, food security, transport or demographic change. Union investments in ICT research infrastructures have provided European researchers with the world's best research networking and computing facilities.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-03 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.