A Wake-Up Call to Strengthen Resilience Through Digital Cooperation

The Digital Cooperation Organisation (DCO) expressed its solidarity with those affected by the massive power outage that struck parts of Portugal and Spain on 28 April 2025, disrupting essential services and impacting tens of millions of people across the Iberian Peninsula.

The DCO also expressed concerns over the scale of the disruption, which resulted in a loss of €1.3 billion (US$1.39 billion) for the Spanish economy alone, according to ATA — Spain’s self-employed workers’ association — highlighting the critical importance of digital resilience and coordinated emergency response mechanisms among nations.

“This outage underscores the crucial importance of cross-border digital preparedness and cooperative mechanisms,” stated Deemah AlYahya, Secretary-General of the DCO. “We must now seize the opportunity to build smarter, more interoperable systems and explore innovative regional solutions such as Power Pooling — made possible through digital platforms and real-time data coordination.”

Affecting nearly 60 million people across both countries, the disruption brought transport systems to a standstill, halted communications and interrupted critical services. Beyond the financial losses, the outage disrupted daily life, stranded commuters and cut off essential services. It also exposed the fragility of the digital economy, halting online services, freezing digital payments and paralysing cloud operations.

The incident serves as a powerful reminder of increasing vulnerabilities within our interconnected digital and physical infrastructures — and the urgent need for reinforced global cooperation to build more resilient, sustainable digital systems, alongside collaborative cross-border responses to crisis scenarios.

This week’s outage follows other recent systemic failures, including the Microsoft global outage in July 2024, which affected over 40,000 organisations worldwide, disrupting vital digital services. Digital resilience is now essential for national stability, economic security and societal well-being — enabled by cross-border cooperation, an ethos central to the mission of the DCO.

Indeed, cross-border cooperation proved to be the solution, with Morocco, a DCO Member State, playing a key role in the restoration of power to Spain. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed heartfelt gratitude to the country for its vital assistance in restoring electricity to southern regions after the unprecedented power outage.

Power Pooling, where countries share integrated generation capacity and grid stability across borders, offers a transformative path towards energy resilience. Through intelligent digital integration and cross-border protocols, such systems can buffer demand shocks, optimise supply chains and reduce carbon intensity — while strengthening geopolitical trust and economic efficiency.

The DCO previously witnessed a similar example of Power Pooling among its Member States, when the GCC power grid, to which electricity-surplus Qatar is a major contributor, came to the rescue of Kuwait in 2015, after large parts of the country were plunged into darkness due to a power outage.

“What happened yesterday in Spain and Portugal, and last year with Microsoft globally, are no longer isolated technical issues. They are warning signals for every nation building its digital economy. The DCO stands firm: digital resilience is no longer optional. It is a cornerstone of national security, economic stability and societal well-being. We call upon all governments, industries and innovators to act decisively, together, to build a safer, more resilient digital future for all,” added AlYahya.

To safeguard nations and build resilient, future-ready digital economies, the DCO highlights four immediate strategic priorities for Member States and the global digital community:

1. Strengthen the Resilience of Digital and Energy Infrastructures: Accelerate investment in diversified, resilient systems ensuring the continuity of services across energy, health, communications and financial sectors.

2. Advance Cross-Border Crisis Coordination Frameworks: Develop unified response mechanisms and information-sharing protocols to address future outages and disruptions more swiftly and effectively.

3. Embed Public-Private Collaboration into National Resilience Plans: Leverage the capabilities of technology providers, energy operators and innovation hubs to reinforce digital infrastructure security.

4. Utilise Data-Driven Tools to Strengthen Vulnerability Assessments: Apply insights from the Digital Economy Navigator (DEN) to proactively identify resilience gaps across infrastructure, policy and skills, enabling governments to prioritise strategic investments.

As digital transformation accelerates across all sectors, from energy and transport to healthcare and finance, disruptions in one region can rapidly cascade across borders. The DCO reiterates its belief that no single nation can address these challenges alone.

The events of the past year — from the Microsoft global disruption to the Iberian blackout — serve as urgent reminders that resilience is the foundation of modern digital economies. The DCO urges all nations, innovators and industries to forge a new global standard of resilience and collective response.

As the world becomes ever more digitally interdependent, multilateral digital cooperation and innovations such as Power Pooling are no longer optional strategies — they are imperatives upon which the future of the digital economy depends.