Digitalisation process and sustainable development of vulnerable territories. Assessment of equity potentials of major Mediterranean Islands

The "Path to the Digital Decade" features the digital transformation goals that the member states of the European Union must reach by 2030. It also highlights the need to align the digital strategy with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by use of relevant indicators for assessing progress in each single SDG. The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), published in 2022, demonstrates how new advances in the digitalisation process have filled several gaps in digital skills and infrastructures; while the DESI Country Profiles witness the lower levels of digital performance of insular territories, compared to the states’ mainland. This paper explores the way digitalisation progress might improve islands’ sustainability performance and equity concerns in the EU. Relevant achievements are assessed by the proposed Index of Islands’ Potential Equity (IIPE), i.e. a composite index, combining an Islands’ Sustainability Index (IIS) for grasping socio-economic and environmental aspects; and an Islands’ Digitalisation Index (IDI), for identifying the level of public/private digital transformation. The results obtained through the IIPE index demonstrate how powerful the strategies of island governments in digitalisation progress can prove in achieving SDGs and rendering island contexts less vulnerable and more competitive in the European scenery.