Digital technology’s capacity to generate income and jobs depends on the role played by local authorities in stimulating this new economic sector.
Stimulate local economic development
The challenge for local authorities is to encourage the local entrepreneurial ecosystem to embrace digital technology.
Digital tools can serve to improve commercial offers deployed on the municipal territory (develop tourism, manage urban markets, modernise logistics equipment), and thereby contribute to economic attractivity. But digital technology is also a sector of activity in itself, whose firms of all sizes deserve to be accompanied. Local authorities are responsible for encouraging innovation and, when they can, proposing a service offering to firms.
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Clarify expectations: digital technology as an economic sector or at the service of economic activities?
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Produce a diagnosis: know your local digital ecosystem
The diagnosis must incorporate the dynamics of the formal and informal local economic fabric, the universities, research laboratories and national and international stakeholders in the sector.
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Identify potentially interested local partners
Identify the local economic stakeholders involved in digital technology to build partnerships.
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Start with pilot actions to support the digitalization of the local economy
Local authorities, with the help of start-ups, can launch pilot actions to test new digital public-oriented services.
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Define a roadmap to boost local economic development
It is in the interests of local authorities to position themselves above all as facilitators, mediators and promoters of third party dynamics.
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Evaluate learning and follow the digitalization of the local economy
Once the pilot digital services have been tested, enterprise-local authority partnerships can be designed to scale them up.
