Abstract:

The digital economy is a reality that shapes the world business environment and impacts the performance of firms independently of their dimension or economic activity. The use of ICT tools in firms is not straightforward for all the firms, namely the ones with a smaller dimension or in certain economic activities that do not understand or are not able to implement the common use of computers, internet connections or do not see as fundamental the presence in the internet, with a website for instance. Portugal is a small economy with a small local market in which the government recognizes the importance of the digital economy. However, a big way had to be run in the Portuguese business environment to achieve the standards of the European Union regarding the digital economy. For understanding the evolution of Portuguese firms on the digital economy and the adoption of ICT tools, several indicators collected by the survey on “Information and Communication Technologies Usage in Enterprises (IUTICE)” carried out by Statistics Portugal from 2003 to 2017, are used in this research work to illustrate the evolution of ICT tools on the Portuguese business environment in the 21st century. It is concluded that Portuguese firms have understood the crucial importance of the use of computers, internet connection and presence on the internet. However, for the majority of Portuguese firms, the presence on the internet continues not to be a reality and a major public and private investment
is requested to implement effective measures that change the actual scenario.