From 2 to 4 September Santander hosted the 33^rd Telecommunications and Digital Economy Encounter (Encuentro de la Economía Digital y las Telecomunicaciones) organized by the Spanish Association of Electronics, Digital Contents and ICT Companies (Asociación de Empresas de Electrónica, Tecnologías de la Información, Telecomunicaciones y Contenidos Digitales: AMETIC) with the collaboration of Banco Santander and Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo.

Under the banner theme “The Moment of Digital Reindustrialization in Spain”, AMETIC’s president, Pedro Mier, stressed this idea: ”The time has come to drive the reindustrialization of Spain and Europe on the strength of digitalization and innovation, the real key to international competitiveness. As well as users we also have to strive to be actors, and to achieve this we have to develop technology. A great opportunity now lies before us and we need to address it properly, with the whole country behind us and driven by a joint effort from technological, political, economic and social forces”.

GOVERNMENT COMMITMENT TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Institutions were to the fore in this year’s congress. Spain’s acting president Pedro Sánchez attended the closing session; meanwhile, during the three days of the congress, several acting ministers had taken part, such as the Minister of Economics and Enterprise, Nadia Calviño, the Minister of Education and Professional Training, Isabel Celaá and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto.

The acting government has thus demonstrated its ongoing commitment to the digital transformation of the economy, helping Spain to capture its share of the potential offered by this digitalization. After all, the digital economy accounts for only 5.8% of Spain’s GDP, lagging well behind the 10% figure chalked up by other countries such as the UK.

This encounter is one of the most important events of Spain’s digitalization calendar, bringing together the main stakeholders of a fundamental sector for the economy of Spain and Europe. Keynote speakers included top representatives from Spanish and European public bodies and senior executives from leading technology firms, all of them giving their opinions and reflections on the sector and its future trends.

For yet another year GMV was keen to support and attend the Santander congress, inputting its wealth of experience and its viewpoint on issues as diverse as innovation, cybersecurity and autonomous driving.

GREATER WEIGHT OF PRIVATE R&D INVESTMENT

The General Manager of GMV’s Secure e-Solutions sector, Luis Fernando Álvarez-Gascón, in his role as president of AMETIC’s innovation committee, moderated the panel discussion taking stock of innovation in Spain.

During this debate the GMV executive called for a bigger participation by private investment in the national R&D setup, currently divided equally between the public and private sectors. Álvarez-Gascón arguged that “R&D in Spain should grow to 2.4% of the GDP with a 70% participation from the private sector”.

After ruing the fact that Spain does not make innovation a pillar of its competitiveness, Álvarez-Gascón advocated turning this situation around by improving the quality of subsidies, bringing in clear tax incentives for R&D and setting up new-generation instruments, among other factors, stressing that “Risk conditions must be improved to create certainty within the market”.

WHAT SHOULD WE LEARN FROM SECURITY INCIDENTS?

For his part the CISO of GMV’s Secure e-Solutions sector, Mariano Benito, during his participation in the discussion panel “What should we learn from the most recent security incidents?” recognized that many firms tend to dwell only on the positive side of the digital transformation; there is a certain resistance to consider the incidents that might occur. This means that security investments are made only on a seat-of-the-pants basis when an incident actually occurs. It is by now obvious that any firm might suffer a security incident, so Benito considered it to be good news that companies are becoming more aware of the need for design-up, company-wide security, providing the necessary resources and remaining constantly aware of everything that is happening to be able to react in time in all cases.

POSITIONING TECHNOLOGY FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

In the panel dealing with the “Connected vehicle and sustainable mobility”, the manager of GMV’s Automobile Business Unit, Sara Gutiérrez, focused on autonomous driving’s need for systems and technologies that cater for positioning with maximum precision, safety and reliability. She gave as an example the recent contract awarded by the German carmaker BMW Group to GMV for developing advanced, precise and safe positioning technology for its new generation of autonomous vehicles.

She also pointed out that mobility trends of the future will revolve around increasingly connected and electrified cars that allow for other driving modes, while driver-assistance and autonomous-driving technology is progressively phased in.

BEHIND EVERY LODESTAR PROJECT LIES A HUGE AMBITION

The congress closed with a final discussion panel looking at “mission-based innovation”, with the participation yet again of Luis Fernando Álvarez-Gascón, who argued that “all accumulated knowledge has to have a market impact; if there is no impact there is no innovation”. Álvarez-Gascón talked about the digitalization tools now being used in space and also spoke of “proyectos tractor” (lodestar projects driving innovation and R&D) as “transforming and innovating projects capable of solving our society’s problems”, claiming that “behind every lodestar project lies a huge ambition”.

This 33^rd Telecommunications and Digital Economy Encounter ended with a government commitment to work towards an ongoing improvement of digitalization in Spain, turning it into one of the priority lines of action and creating a digital constitution.