Madeline Siösteen Thiel, the session moderator, reminded the attendees of the success of last year’s Global Forum which was held in Stockholm and then introduced the other speakers.

Gabrielle Gauthey talked about the international trends for new investment model in NGA. Showing some statistics about the growth of the broadband and mobile connections and public WiFi spots, she explained that the world had changed and Internet had in fact become the portal of our lives, and all the contents are moving to the cloud. Mobile traffic is growing due to smartphone spreading and “Internet of Things”. She also talked about the decoupling between traffic and revenues in mobile networks. Europe needs new investment models for network deployment and needs to find them elsewhere, for example in Mexico, where a new model based on a common infrastructure is being tested.

Lorenzo Montermini, IT Manager GPI Group, introduced us to the new challenges of Public Healthcare. He said that there must be a redefinition of public sector role. Healthcare should not be a hospital and doctors exclusively, but its center should become the patient itself thanks to the implementation of self-service systems.

Michel Catinat (Head of Unit for Key Enabling Technologies and ICT, DG ENTERPRISE European Commission) pointed out the necessity of a European certification scheme for digital skills making a mark of the importance of certification systems. In the end, he stressed the importance of training packages co-designed with ICT industry.