Nine proposals to promote digitalization and tech for sustainable development

The public sector procures around SEK 800 billion every year and is therefore an important player in driving innovation and development forward in many industries, including the tech industry. The public sector needs to focus on setting relevant sustainability requirements in procurements of IT products and services and develop the work of following up the requirements during the contract period. To promote and contribute to the development of sustainable tech solutions, contracting authorities and entities must have the courage to procure on function and the result they want to achieve to give companies the opportunity to propose and develop modern, circular and innovative sustainable solutions. In order to realize
this, a high level of buyer competence, improved digital skills and increased organizational digital maturity in the public sector need to be ensured.

Increased optimization and efficiency with the help of 5G can provide major climate benefits in many sectors and industries. Good coverage, capacity and open collaboration platforms are needed for Sweden to be able to take full advantage of 5G's great potential to contribute to achieving the emission targets by 2030. The Government needs to initiate and support the establishment of test beds and concrete development programmes so that authorities, academia and industry can jointly test solutions for the promotion of sustainable tech solutions and the creation of new innovations in the field. Furthermore, it must be ensured that the frequencies designated for 5G are brought to market and that planned frequency allocations are not delayed.

The need to share data will increase and efforts to make open data easily accessible must continue and intensify to promote the tech industry's ability to contribute smart and sustainable solutions, including through AI. It must be easier to share data both nationally and internationally and between public actors and the private sector, which requires adaptation, secure systems and standards for data exchange. Sweden needs to have an explicit ambition to be the best in the Nordic region at making government data available. Fee financing requirements for authorities that currently sell their data to finance their operations must be removed. The cost of accessing open data must be set at zero or a maximum cost price.

Computer literacy, as well as computer science and critical thinking, are central to Sweden's goal of climate neutrality by 2045. Without this knowledge, the tech industry's opportunities to contribute to climate
smart solutions may be lost. To strengthen digital skills, it is therefore important that the government and education providers ensure that digitalization permeates education at all levels of the education
system. To drive innovation and the development of digital services that contribute to the sustainable transition of society as a whole, the Government also needs to invest in research and strong research environments through targeted funding in the area.

Safeguarding critical societal functions, personal privacy and companies' ability to secure business-critical information and systems is of great importance for sustainable development. Tech companies often provide the solutions for this and work to increase information and cyber security in both the private and public sectors. The efforts of the private sector must therefore be matched by the public sector. The National Cyber Security Center and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency need to take further steps to support the entire business community in delivering secure solutions through increased information exchange on threat and security information between responsible authorities and the tech industry. The authorities must have the right opportunities, for example through legislation, and sufficient resources to meet the private sector's need for support, information and cooperation.

Sweden needs to raise its ambitions for increased circularity of small electronics. The government should implement the deposit study's proposal for stricter producer responsibility with a particular focus on information, incentives and responsibility, for example by requiring the industry to provide collection data and to inform customers about the return and deletion of data. This would mean a move away from traditional collection and recycling to also promoting and taking advantage of opportunities to reuse small electronics.

The Swedish chemical tax on electronics is a national tax on products for a global market. It is not effective because it does not lead to the desired environmental effects and discourages the reuse of products.

The tax should be abolished in favor of voluntary or other legislative initiatives to promote substitution of undesirable chemicals in the context of EU work. If the tax is retained, it should include a zero tax option and it should be the intrinsic hazardous properties of the individual substance that are taxed. A basic prerequisite is also a functioning enforcement system.