Era of Digitalization

The long wave of digitalization is changing the fundamentals of how we live. Today, over half the world’s population is online, a one hundred-fold increase since 1990. It is said that 90 percent of the world’s data is created every two years, implying a 10-fold increase in data every two years. Identities are formed, relationships maintained, and goods and services transacted online. Tens of millions of businesses depend on digital markets, with an estimated 1.9 billion people purchasing goods online in 2019.

 

Quate

“In 2018, there were more “things” (8.6 billion) connected to the Internet than people (5.7 billion mobile broadband subscriptions), and the number of IoT connections are forecast to exceed 22 billion by 2024” UNCTAD

  

In this era of digitalization data is the lifeblood of automated decision-making and innovation. Massive amounts of data can increasingly be stored, shared and analysed cheaply, making it accessible, intelligible and valuable.

Artificial intelligence enables more sophisticated targeting, design, and customization of all kinds of products and services. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow different companies’ software to interact automatically.  Digitalization enables innovative solutions in education, energy, agriculture and land use, transportation and other sectors.

 

Digital identity systems are particularly important for people to be able to operate in this world. Like passports, they authenticate and validate a person’s unique identity. Almost half of the world’s population, about 3.2 billion people already have some form of ID able to be used online.  This is expected to rise to 5 billion by 2024. Whilst many digital IDs are issued by national or local governments, such as India’s Aadhaar and Estonia’s e-ID, many others are issued by commercial or non-profit organizations, from the two plus billions of Facebook-registered users through to Sweden’s BankID, Belgian itsme, or MOSIP. Financial institutions have said that by relying on the Aadhaar tech stack, account opening costs have decreased by over 40% and opening an account has become instant instead of taking three days to approve.

Quate

“By 2025, 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally – that’s the equivalent of 200 million individual DVDs per day.”
World Economic Forum

Digitalization reshapes the transition to sustainable development. Most obviously, it opens the possibility of accelerating the ‘dematerialisation’ of the economy, with associated environmental benefits, increased access and reduced costs. Digitalization could help reduce global carbon emission by 15 percent through innovative solutions in energy, agriculture and land use and transportation The Carbon Trust in collaboration with the mobile operators’ association GSMA estimates that mobile technologies may enable emission reductions in other sectors that are ten times greater than the direct emissions related to the technology itself. Nevertheless, there is still a challenge to control energy use and impacts.

Digitalization allows many economic activities to go online, services to substitute for physical goods, small and medium-sized enterprises to access world markets, and materials to be more effectively tracked in order to be reused and recycled. Health and education services can be digitalized, with reduced costs and with distance from major urban centres becoming less of a barrier to access. Infrastructure becomes smarter, from buildings that can use less energy and clean and recycle water, to transport systems that are more flexible and less polluting. Digitalization enables physical assets to be shared and more intensively used, such as cars, roads and homes but also clothes, equipment and even food.

 

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UN: Big Data and Sustainable Development
UNCTAD: Digital Economy Report (2019)  
Alliance for Financial Inclusion: Statement Accelerating Financial Inclusion for Disadvantaged Groups (2020)
World Economic Forum/PWC World Economic Forum/PwC: Unlocking Technology for the Global Goals (2020)

 

The long wave of digitalization is changing the fundamentals of how we live. Today, over half the world’s population is online, a one hundred-fold increase since 1990. It is said that 90 percent of the world’s data is created every two years, implying a 10-fold increase in data every two years. Identities are formed, relationships maintained, and goods and services transacted online. Tens of millions of businesses depend on digital markets, with an estimated 1.9 billion people purchasing goods online in 2019.

 

Quate

“In 2018, there were more “things” (8.6 billion) connected to the Internet than people (5.7 billion mobile broadband subscriptions), and the number of IoT connections are forecast to exceed 22 billion by 2024” UNCTAD

  

In this era of digitalization data is the lifeblood of automated decision-making and innovation. Massive amounts of data can increasingly be stored, shared and analysed cheaply, making it accessible, intelligible and valuable.

Artificial intelligence enables more sophisticated targeting, design, and customization of all kinds of products and services. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow different companies’ software to interact automatically.  Digitalization enables innovative solutions in education, energy, agriculture and land use, transportation and other sectors.

 

Digital identity systems are particularly important for people to be able to operate in this world. Like passports, they authenticate and validate a person’s unique identity. Almost half of the world’s population, about 3.2 billion people already have some form of ID able to be used online.  This is expected to rise to 5 billion by 2024. Whilst many digital IDs are issued by national or local governments, such as India’s Aadhaar and Estonia’s e-ID, many others are issued by commercial or non-profit organizations, from the two plus billions of Facebook-registered users through to Sweden’s BankID, Belgian itsme, or MOSIP. Financial institutions have said that by relying on the Aadhaar tech stack, account opening costs have decreased by over 40% and opening an account has become instant instead of taking three days to approve.

Quate

“By 2025, 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally – that’s the equivalent of 200 million individual DVDs per day.”
World Economic Forum

Digitalization reshapes the transition to sustainable development. Most obviously, it opens the possibility of accelerating the ‘dematerialisation’ of the economy, with associated environmental benefits, increased access and reduced costs. Digitalization could help reduce global carbon emission by 15 percent through innovative solutions in energy, agriculture and land use and transportation The Carbon Trust in collaboration with the mobile operators’ association GSMA estimates that mobile technologies may enable emission reductions in other sectors that are ten times greater than the direct emissions related to the technology itself. Nevertheless, there is still a challenge to control energy use and impacts.

Digitalization allows many economic activities to go online, services to substitute for physical goods, small and medium-sized enterprises to access world markets, and materials to be more effectively tracked in order to be reused and recycled. Health and education services can be digitalized, with reduced costs and with distance from major urban centres becoming less of a barrier to access. Infrastructure becomes smarter, from buildings that can use less energy and clean and recycle water, to transport systems that are more flexible and less polluting. Digitalization enables physical assets to be shared and more intensively used, such as cars, roads and homes but also clothes, equipment and even food.

 

Icon
UN: Big Data and Sustainable Development
UNCTAD: Digital Economy Report (2019)  
Alliance for Financial Inclusion: Statement Accelerating Financial Inclusion for Disadvantaged Groups (2020)
World Economic Forum/PWC World Economic Forum/PwC: Unlocking Technology for the Global Goals (2020)