Czech Cluster of Leaders in IT & Digital Services

In July, we attended the first plenary meeting of the new European Parliament in Strasbourg following the recent European Parliament elections. At the same time, we were part of a gala reception prepared by DIGITALEUROPE for the new MEPs. Among them were also representatives from the Czech Republic.

We were able to present to them the priorities of our cluster members for the next five-year period, which are:

• the single European market, including the digital one;
• artificial intelligence,
• digital services and their regulation,
• efficiency through digitisation.

The trip to Strasbourg was also part of the internationalisation branch of our cluster project. It was good to hear from the MEPs present that they consider digital issues to be one of their top priorities for the next term. We also used the event for matchmaking with other IT associations of European countries.

In recent days we participated in a trade mission organized by the Czech-Algerian Chamber of Commerce together with the Czech Chamber of Commerce.

At the international trade fair in Algiers we first presented our selected members at the Czech stand. Subsequently, the activities of the AAVIT cluster were presented to a delegation of important Algerian stakeholders and during matchmaking with Algerian entrepreneurs we were looking for business opportunities and cooperation possibilities for our members. Algeria has a vibrant IT sector and the cost of skilled workers is significantly lower compared to the Czech Republic. The backbone of the Algerian economy is the large mining and manufacturing industry, which provides a number of opportunities for digital solutions providers, particularly in the areas of digital infrastructure and cybersecurity.

Last but not least, we met with representatives of the Algerian Ministry of Start-ups, who told us how the Algerian government systematically supports the development of start-ups.

The DIGITALEUROPE Presidency Summit in Budapest welcomed leaders of digital associations from 21 countries associated with DIGITALEUROPE. With the contribution of our cluster project, we couldn’t miss it!

What did we focus on besides the priorities of the upcoming Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council?

• the challenges for the new European Commission in the digital economy;
• the EU’s Digital Single Market, which is still not complete;
• the implementation of the RRF with examples of good practice from Estonia and Greece. In Estonia, the digital economy is a clear government priority;
• digitisation of the public sector. It was good to be able to show colleagues the new Citizen Portal on mobile.

But most of all, as always, it was a great opportunity to exchange experiences and opinions. Thanks again for the great organization IVSZ – IT Association of Hungary and the whole DIGITALEUROPE team. We returned with a lot of interesting insights and information for our cluster members and in turn had the opportunity to pass on their ideas.

The 3Seas business forum was a real treat! In Vilnius, as part of our cluster project, we participated in a large business forum accompanied by a meeting of presidents and senior officials from 13 CEE countries.

In addition to meeting potential partners and participating in panel discussions, it was great to meet again the leaders of other digital associations – Simonas Cerniauskas from INFOBALT, Doris Põld from ITL Estonian ICT Cluster and Michal Kanownik from Związek Cyfrowa Polska / Digital Poland Association.

Panels with distinguished speakers were dedicated to the topics of energy transformation, transport transformation and the reconstruction of Ukraine. We hope that we will be able to involve our cluster members in these processes.

The 3Seas region as a whole has a very positive dynamic. In 2018, its aggregate GDP accounted for 13.5% of the EU’s GDP, and in 2023 it was already 16.4%. Thanks also to the potential of digital technologies and talent in the region, we believe that this share will continue to grow.

Thank you once again to the Confederation of Industry and Transport of the Czech Republic for organizing the whole mission.

Our trade mission and cluster trip to South America with the Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic and accompanied by Minister Jozef Sikely will be one of the highlights of 2024.

The first destination of our trip was Chile. Like the Czech Republic, Chile is an open economy, focused on exports. Although its export mix is dominated by the export of raw materials, especially copper.

Chile is, however, an interesting country for the nowadays so often emphasized topics of green transition and digital transition. It has extremely suitable natural conditions for building RES and intends to obtain all its energy from renewable sources as early as 2040. In addition, Chile has huge reserves of lithium, which is a key raw material for the production of digital hardware.

Our next destination was Uruguay. At an entrepreneurship forum in Montevideo, we discussed partnerships with Universidad ORT Uruguay (and founder of the local startup ecosystem Enrique Topolansky) and UTEC – Universidad Tecnológica. We made contact with a number of other IT entrepreneurs and presented solutions and activities of our members. Uruguay has a strong profile in digital technology and has by far the most unicorns per population in Latin America. This was really promising!

Representatives of two companies from our cluster also participated in the trip and used this opportunity to establish business contacts with the aim of penetrating new markets. At the same time, we agreed to sign a memorandum of cooperation with our partners in Uruguay.

A workshop was held yesterday for our members in the healthcare sector. The AAVIT cluster brings together members who use modern digital technologies – artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality – for healthcare purposes. As well as members who provide healthcare services.

In the past, our members often struggled with the fact that the legislation they had to deal with when introducing new products and services was not very clear to them. Therefore, with the help of our legislative expert for the healthcare sector, we organized a workshop to present to our members the main legislative pitfalls in certifying new healthcare procedures and products, as well as the issues of reimbursement decrees and communication with health insurance companies.

The workshop participants were also shown several examples of good practice as well as bad practice from the past. At the end of the workshop, the participants had individual consultations on their cases.

Today we held the conference Digitalisation Challenges – The Path to Digital Excellence in the Digital Revolution, which we organized together with the Economic Daily for our members as part of our cluster activities.

Together with Ivan Bartos, Deputy Prime Minister for Digitalisation and Minister for Regional Development, and Ondrej Tomek, investor and entrepreneur, we discussed the main challenges facing the Czech Republic in strengthening its competitiveness.

Digitalization is a necessary condition for success in this respect. The resilience of Europe and the Czech Republic depends on systematic support for investments in the implementation of innovation and digital solutions.

For our members, the conference was an opportunity to discuss with our guests what the support for the digital economy and applied research in AI in the Czech Republic will look like in the coming years, as well as to share their insights and experiences with Deputy Prime Minister Bartos.

One of the main findings was that the European, and even more so the Czech market, is undercapitalised and not open enough. The problem is also the low level of employment in innovative and from an investment point of view interesting entities, especially in start-ups. At the same time, the conference provided an opportunity for our members to network.

One of the most important international events our cluster participated in this year – the DIGITALEUROPE Presidency Summit in Brussels – is successfully over. Besides inspiring discussions and strategy planning, we visited chip researchers from imec, welcomed 6 “Brussels” ambassadors and representatives of the future Belgian Presidency.

We shared with them the priorities we had consulted with the cluster members beforehand. The main ones include sufficient support for innovative start-ups and ensuring sufficient public support instruments for IT, as well as reducing red tape in the area of drawing European funds to consolidate the European single market.

During the trip we managed to establish a number of interesting contacts with foreign partners and create conditions for cooperation of some of our members with foreign stakeholders in the field of chip manufacturing. DIGITALEUROPE at its best.

Today we had the honour to organize a cluster symposium together with the Economic Daily entitled Modernisation and Structural Funds, Subsidies and Grants as an Opportunity for the Economy. It was part of our cluster project, which aims, among other things, to provide AAVIT members with advice and insight in the field of fundraising.

AAVIT Director Jaromír Hanzal and representatives of our members Juraj Striezenec, COO from Kiwi.com and Ondrej Homola from N1 took part in a packed panel which included speakers such as Minister of the Environment Petr Hladík, Chief Director of the Funds Section of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic Marian Piecha, Director of the State Environmental Fund Petr Valdman and Chairman of the Office for the Protection of Competition Petr Mlsna.

To our delight, the thoughts of the other panelists very often overlapped with our long-held views.

We believe that the outcomes of the symposium will lead to the cultivation of the social debate on the grant environment in the Czech Republic and to the gradual removal of obstacles that today prevent the full use of the potential that subsidy instruments create in the field of R&D, IT and digitalization.

The AAVIT cluster has already held its 3rd annual membership meeting!

Yesterday we met our members in the stunning premises of Villa Richter under Prague Castle. We are extremely grateful for the support of our members in building the AAVIT cluster and for the positive atmosphere they bring to Czech society with their companies.

A big thank you to the keynote speaker Oliver Dlouhy from Kiwi.com, who in his speech emphasized the need to change the current Czech narrative of the manufacturing country to a focused support of digital innovation. We agreed that we see the future of a prosperous Czech Republic in fully exploiting the potential of the digital revolution.

Our cluster will play an important role in this process. It is our common goal. Thank you to all members who attended the cluster meeting. We appreciate your active contribution and support of our common vision. We believe we are on the right track.

Currently, the negative economic outlook of the Czech Republic and its inability to catch the world economic leaders fast enough is often a subject of debate. It is therefore essential that public and private sector leaders join forces to turn this situation around. For this reason we were also very pleased that the meeting in Villa Richter offered our members a range of interesting information in the field of fundraising as part of our cluster project.

We would therefore like to thank the representatives of the public administration for their involvement, especially our colleagues at the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic.

Representatives of the AAVIT cluster have just returned from the Warsaw Summit of the CEE Digital Coalition, which once again connected the countries of the 3 Seas region. It was great to meet a number of new partners with whom we exchanged our experiences and enriched our cluster activities.

We all agreed that digitalisation is the alpha and omega of future economic development and that regulation is not the answer. The digital sector in the 3 Seas countries is plagued by common problems and we were happy to learn a lot of interesting experiences and best practices in terms of fundraising, building start-up infrastructure or cybersecurity to pass on to our members.

The Czech IT sector is growing and investing. A quarter of all funds spent by companies in the Czech Republic on research and development come from the IT sector. The limit to development is the large shortage of skilled labour in all countries.

We would like to thank Związek Cyfrowa Polska/Digital Poland Association for the invitation and space for our CEO Jaromír Hanzal in the panel discussion.