In the period June 25 to June 29 in the framework of the Bulgarian presidency of the Council of the EU, Sofia will be host of the European week on digitization and innovations, as well as the European Digital Assembly. The Bulgarian capital city will welcome the political and IT elite of Europe or more than 6,000 participants in total - politicians, specialists, businessmen and managers of well-known companies that set the direction for the digital future. All of them will join forces with the aim for a more efficient, secure and sustainable development of information and communication technologies. Chair of the plenary sessions will be Bulgarian Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Maria Gabriel.

Because of the increasing number of hacker attacks that have been severely threatening companies around the world, in 2018 the European Commission will introduce new cyber security rules. Cyber-attacks are not stopped by borders and affect not only our personal data, but also sectors such as energy, health, transport, and so on. That is why according to EU Commissioner Gabriel, it is important that Bulgaria is among the countries to focus on the need for more cyber security specialists and to show that we can only cope with this phenomenon together. In this respect, improvement of computer skills of the majority of the population will be another important topic of the discussions in Sofia. It is expected that after 2020 computer skills will be a basic requirement for 90% of the jobs offered, Commissioner Gabriel added.

"This is a Digital Assembly - an event that is not meant to be a closed circle discussion between IT specialists, but on the contrary - it aims at reaching the maximum number of people who see that digital technologies are an opportunity, they are skills and knowledge. A leading topic during the Assembly will also be related to the risks involved in the development of digital technologies. With this participation, we want to highlight how important it is to mobilize all institutions, the private sector and the managers in order to turn the lack of staff into the sector, from a shortcoming - into an opportunity. Today, we lack 300,000 IT specialists and by 2020 they will be 500,000. This trend also presents another risk that the lack of digital skills could pose a risk of social isolation of new groups of the population. The current level of 37 percent of people having basic digital skills needs to be raised. Europe already needs to attract cyber security experts and this will be one of the issues discussed in Sofia."

Bulgaria is proud to be first when it comes to the number of women employed in the IT sector. In this country the level is about 28 percent, with the EU average level being 16%. According to Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova, however, the most important question at local level is what the new technologies bring to the citizens. For Sofia, which will be the Digital Capital of Europe, it will be a challenge to show how the city helps the average person by applying digital technologies. The Bulgarian capital is a city that relies on good education in the digital sphere. Currently, 24 secondary schools offer places for over 1,000 students who get acquainted with computer networks, system programming, as well as computer equipment and technologies. There are also enough universities in Sofia that teach these skills and there are over 11,000 IT students in them”.

"In recent years, Sofia has been successfully developing as an IT center and attracts the outsourcing industry, and for us these are very important sectors in the development of the economy. Our capital city is among the top three in Europe when it comes to the number of start-up companies, mainly in the IT sector. The share of IT businesses in the local economy has also increased in recent years. In 2015 it was 3.8%, and now it is 5.8%. Official employment figures for the sector show that it employs over 40 thousand people," the Sofia Mayor added.

English: Alexander Markov