ŠAVŠ/TAČR Digital Czechia in a Digital Europe

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In his article Development of Digital Skills and Addressing the Shortage of ICT Professionals, Karel Pavlica discusses two types of strategies. The first focuses on educating and disseminating ICT skills to the general public. His research is mainly aimed at addressing the issues surrounding citizens currently or potentially threatened by digital exclusion. The second part opens up the topic of ensuring a sufficient number of expert ICT specialists. The author focuses primarily on the identification of encouraging concepts and proven approaches from United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark. Josef Horák, building upon the initial definition of the term electronic invoicing (e-invoice), compares the current state of e-invoices in the European context, especially their implementation in individual countries of the European Union. In doing so, he focuses on the use of e-invoices as part of B2G (Business to Government) and B2B (Business to Business) transactions. At the same time, Horák also addresses issues relating to the problems faced by the current system of e-invoices in the Czech Republic, which need to be upgraded in the coming years. In the next article, Michal Bokša and Stanislav Šaroch focus on the digitalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), seeking “best practices” especially in countries where the industrial-processing industry is numerically prominent (with the main focus on the automotive industry). It is precisely these countries that are very close to the Czech milieu in economic terms, so they often face similar problems. In this respect, their analysis is based primarily on the Germany’s current “best practices”, which are very closely intertwined with the Czech economy. In light of the Czech Republic’s current period of progressive centralization of its digitalization efforts, Jiří Strouhal’s article summarizes the degree of centralization and decentralization across European countries. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of both centralized structures (e.g. Finland, United Kingdom and Austria) and those that are highly decentralized (e.g. Denmark, Sweden and Luxembourg). Its conclusion provides a list of priority goals of e-government in several selected countries. Besides the study of e-invoice, an additional article focusing on effective support for startups was researched by Josef Horák. It evaluates startups within the European context and thus provides an in-depth comparison at the level of individual countries of the European Union. Horák specifies different programs and procedures supporting startups and how these programs and procedures led to their development and optimal support. The United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, Ireland and Spain were the main sources of “best practices” for this section. The final article by Michal Bokša discusses cyber security. In it, the author summarizes the current trends and economic impacts of cybercrime, focusing