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Once these safeguards are introduced, it will be important to overcome the known limitations in terms of institutional and technical capacities for monitoring and enforcement. The needs of WFD implementation have provided motivation to water authorities to push water suppliers to improve data collection, organisation and reporting. For example, water utilities and irrigation cooperatives have accelerated the installation of water meters or improved their maintenance and repair (Buchanan et al., 2019). However, opportunities remain. For instance, reported data and statistics frequently lack the necessary accuracy, because of the issue of over-abstraction (including incidents of unauthorised and unregistered abstraction). The challenge is more serious in the agricultural sector and, particularly, in southern Europe (Buchanan et al., 2019). Digitalisation has already become a common denominator for all sectors, but the exploration and validation of its potential applications is at different stages in each of them (e.g. energy being a frontrunner, water following slowly). This should be seen as an opportunity to use the experience of sectors that are well ahead to leapfrog towards meaningful and effective exploitation of digital solutions. For water policy implementation, digital applications could facilitate data collection and information sharing while reducing the administrative burden associated to reporting. Digital water is also seen as an enabler of circular economy models (e.g. turning wastewater treatment plants into “Blue Resource Centres”) and could carry potential to increase participation and mutual learning to identify new and innovative ways to overcome the societal challenges of our era.