Monaco’s Future designed as a Cutting Edge Digital Economy

Earlier this month HSH Prince Albert gave a roadmap for emerging from the crisis – including focussing on supporting businesses and attracting new investors.

One of the main objectives is to place digital at the heart of new initiatives in the Principality, which aims to be more modernized and at the cutting edge of new technologies, a strategic issue for all countries nowadays. 

Monaco has already taken a lead by being the first European country to equip itself with its own Sovereign Cloud, “Monaco Cloud”. in order have its own secure and sovereign infrastructure from 2021.

“The crisis has revealed glaring disparities: the economies most severely affected are those which have not been able to put in place the means and tools necessary to maintain solid relations between the State and its citizens, for example, in the same way as a company that has not been able to keep close to its consumers, Today, more than ever, digital technology has become a strategic and critical issue for each country. This is why I am keen to expand its use within the Principality by allocating € 20M and helping my country to write a new page and become a model country in terms of digital technology,” explains HSH Prince Albert II.

This plan will be implemented by Extended Monaco, a program making digital technology the basis of all Monegasque public policies and orchestrated by Frédéric Genta and his 200 employees. The digital budget is proportionally one of the highest in Europe: nearly € 400 per inhabitant.

The digital part of Monaco’s recovery plan revolves around three promising axes.

1. The Launch of Monaco Cloud

The Principality is thus acquiring its own infrastructure: a sovereign and secure cloud. The data will be stored in the Principality, under Monegasque law and with a level of security validated and monitored by the Monegasque Digital Security Agency. The cloud will also take care to meet environmental objectives. This Monegasque cloud will be operated by a new SAM, Monaco Cloud, with 100% Monegasque shareholders, with the State as the majority shareholder and Monaco Digital as the industrial partner shareholder.

2. Blue Fund To Train and support Monegasque companies and their employees on their digital transformation 

Endowed with an initial amount of € 20 million the fund will concern itself with the financing of: training, equipment and support for Monegasque companies; The development of local platforms: e-commerce, restaurant reservations, payment systems and the creation of services on the Sovereign Cloud such as efficient and secure videoconferencing.

3. Create a digital economy in the Principality to forge new relationships with European investors on “good for the planet” subjects.

A Security Token Offering (STO) platform, a blockchain fundraising system, is at its core in partnership with Euronext, the main stock exchange in the euro zone. This platform aims to attract new companies, especially digital ones, to Monaco, to create around a hundred jobs each year and to inject € 150M into the Monégasque economy.

Digitally Modernized Public Services for the entire country

The second digital challenge for the Principality is to be able to offer Monegasques and residents a very high quality of public service (and also in the event of new social distancing or confinement measures).

Concretely, the increase in the use of digital technology will focus on:

1- Education, digitally enriching the teaching and learning of students:

Called a “digital college”, this project provides for an ambitious equipment plan: 1,200 individual laptops will be distributed to secondary school students from November 2020.

2- The Monegasque administration, easier to access, available and responsive:

Each Monegasque citizen and resident will have, from summer 2021, a digital identity associated with their new identity or resident card. It will be at the heart of the digital relationship between the Administration and the citizen. It will allow authentication that is both highly secure and simple giving fluid access to State services.

Each user will have access to all of the government’s digital services via a single site and above all will no longer have to re-enter information already known. 

The Principality is at a turning point in its history putting digital in the spotlight to make Monaco a model country in terms of technological advances.