Chamber of Commerce hits out at government's digital plans
Proposals launched last month aimed at upgrading Luxembourg's digital services lack a "concrete plan", say business lobby group
Carlo Thelen, Chamber of Commerce managing director © Photo credit: Lex Kleren
Luxembourg’s Chamber of Commerce has hit out at a government roadmap launched last month aimed at making the economy more digital, criticising what it describes as the “absence of a concrete plan”.
The plans, which aim to make the country's economy more digital-friendly by 2025, include an online business platform which will give companies advice on how to securely use their personal data and intellectual property rights. Companies will also be provided with training kits on how to effectively use artificial intelligence. Fayot's announcement also set out longer-term ambitions, such as accelerating the digitisation of the economy, developing "resilient strategic value chains" and enabling "a secure and reliable transformation of the data economy".
But the Chamber of Commerce, which represents the country's businesses, on Monday criticised the announcement and said there is an “absence of a concrete plan”, adding that the government's roadmap appears "more as a note of intent rather than a strategic plan”.
“It (the Chamber of Commerce) calls for close consultation and strong involvement of economic players with a view to the concrete implementation of actions to strengthen the competitiveness of companies,” the business lobby group said in a statement.
“The success of the ambitious roadmap of the Ministry of the Economy can only be effective under these conditions,” the statement added. It comes as Luxembourg announced the creation of a new mobile app for government services on Monday. The app, MyGuichet.lu, will allow people to fill in administrative forms and arrange appointments with public bodies from their mobile phones.
Luxembourg has come in for criticism for its access to digital services, which have improved in recent years but lag far behind other EU states, such as Estonia, which digitised most of its public health system a decade ago.
The issue of access to online systems was brought into sharp focus last year when the pandemic forced many in-person services to be halted.
