The obvious fact is that there is no digital economy separate from the real economy. It would be like distinguishing the electrified and non-electrified industry. There are no industrial, commercial or service activities in general that do not use digitization for all or part of their activities. At least in the G20 countries. This is why the main theme (and logo) of the German presidency of the G20 is digitization and a conference on the subject has already been held in Berlin. The G20 coordinates governments, not industries. But if Oxford University researchers predict that 47% of current jobs can be automated, if 100 billion investments in digital infrastructure are expected globally over the next 10 years, governments are interested. Indeed, the anemic growth that characterizes the post-crisis recovery may accelerate if digitalisation boosts productivity. And the calls for “basic income” arise from fear of technology and a lack of understanding of technological progress.
The Luddites who destroyed the automatic looms could not imagine a future where children went to school rather than to work. Technology is the solution to human problems and until all problems are solved there will be work, Tim O'Reilly, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, said in Berlin. The real obstacle to growth today is the protection of existing interests, instead of protecting the new, the potential. Biology shows us the "dynamic fitness landscape" or that we do not pass from one fitness peak to another: the previous peak must be canceled for the next one to form. Schumpeter would be happy with this extension of his "creative destruction". An example is the position of Microsoft that dominated the landscape in the 80s and that led others to develop the Internet even if it didn't seem like it could be profited from.
Digitization is not the problem, but the solution, even for the fake news that proliferates on the web. With 7 billion posts a day on Facebook, how many people how long would it take to control them?
Therefore the G20 has a central role if it undertakes to provide all households and businesses with fast Internet (broadband) to develop technologies such as Cloud computing, Big Data and artificial intelligence to facilitate innovation, participation and welfare of the population. Governments should be the first to use digitalisation to better deliver public services. Furthermore, they will have to address the issues of competition, confidentiality of communications, system security and consumer protection.
The spread of digital technologies, like any other technological advance, will cause disruption for some businesses and workers just as productivity and job opportunities will increase in new areas.
So governments must play their part not only in creating the infrastructure, but also in ensuring that the diffusion of digitization is socially inclusive, i.e. that even non-ICT experts receive the necessary training to be included in the new activities and not feel discriminated against and ready for destructive reactions to social cohesion. Humans will become capable of managing digital programs as they have learned to manage immense machines.
Statistics from government agencies are too slow to effectively guide economic and industrial policy. The provision and control of public services is inadequate. In Silicon Valley, for each project, the first thing that is built is a measurement infrastructure to immediately find out what works or not and change accordingly. This is not only the right way for good digitalisation, but for a good policy, capable of immediately assessing whether it achieves the desired goal and changing if it doesn't work. The biggest problem is policy 1.0 with industry 4.0.
It is a long road especially for Italy, where the word "control" is not found in the laws except with the meaning of accounting reporting! Never achievement of established goals.
With citizens who can request and verify the public services they want online, the politicians who today go to Rome with the carriage and the airplane to bring the interests of their electorate seem outdated figures. What if digitization replaced them too?
