The conference programme included a lunch-time address by Mr. Martin Bangemann, Commissioner responsible for industrial affairs, information technologies and telecommunications, who underlined the importance of co-operation in order to improve co-ordination of world-wide policies affecting the fast developing global "on-line" economy.

Mr Matti Aura, the Finnish Minister for Transport and Communications and Mr José Mariano Gago, Minister of Science and Technology of Portugal, gave a comprehensive review of their countries policies and approaches leading towards the Information Society. High Level representatives of other Member States also highlighted the role of public authorities in formulating IS strategies, the factors enabling the creation of a favourable environment for IS and the organisational and public awareness aspects of IS at national and regional/local level.

Members of the European Parliament, Mr A. Alavanos and Mr R. Paasalinna, acted as moderators on the panels addressing issues of arts and culture and making public administrations directly accessible to the citizens-electronic democracy, two areas of important political interest. The other panels covered the following topics: education, employability and work organisation, social integration, SME’s, sustainable development, consumer protection and the empowerment of the user. Several concrete project examples were presented together with the relevant ESIS results.

The conference aimed at presenting an overview of information society developments so far and to determine success factors, barriers, best practices, strategies for promoting synergies and public-private partnerships as well as provide proposals for concrete follow-up actions.

There was an overwhelming request for participation at the conference. The participants represented of a wide spectrum of key information society players from the Member States as well as from CEECs, the Mediterranean, the US, Latin America and the Far East. They included representatives from industry, trade unions, the social partners, educators and high level key players on information society at national levelas well as at local and regional level. The very wide background of the participants greatly contributed to the concrete results and conclusions of the conference. In addition, a number of countries which were not represented at the conference have subsequently contacted ISPO wishing to also join the ESIS initiative.

Given below are:

1. the ESIS findings with respect to information society developments in the EU

2. the conference conclusions and

3. background information on ESIS.

 

Information Society developments in the EU - ESIS findings

• Nearly all Member States have by now launched national initiatives in information society. Although these initiatives differ widely from country to country (some being launched as early as 1994 others as recent as 1998) they focus on creating an overall national strategy in promoting information society developments.

• Generally information society projects launched in the Member States are isolated and few links exist between projects.

• Education and training is the most popular application area. Nearly 50% of projects fall under this category. This is because most projects will have an education and training element as well because it is now becoming widely accepted that education and training is a basic building block for the development of a sound future economy which will fully benefit from the information society. More than half of the projects in this area target adult education.

• Electronic commerce is the objective of 1/3 of all projects. The figure for electronic commerce is increasing rapidly.

• Most projects are more content oriented than technology oriented and they use conventional and ISDN lines.

• There is a strong involvement of national, regional and local authorities with 30% of project being led by them.

• The impact of the information society will become more evident in the next 12 months since over half the projects are currently at above the 60% completion stage and will be finishing soon.

• Projects tend to be of a small scale and around 60% of projects have a total cost of less than 1 MECU.

• SMEs are the primary target of 25% of the projects. The manufacturing sector is poorly addressed - only 13% of projects target this sector.

• Project development effort is mostly at local/regional level even though targeted at national and international markets. (50% of development efforts tend to be local/regional and not even national).

• The majority of the trans-national projects involving more than one Member State are co-financed by the EU. This highlights the important role of EU in promoting collaboration between Member States in this area.

• When project promoters were asked to highlight which were the biggest barriers to project development apart from the obvious problems of high development costs and infrastructure costs the lack of required human resources was also considered a very important barrier to development of more projects. This message is particularly important at a time of high unemployment in Europe. It is clear that in order not to waste the opportunities offered by the information society our educational systems should respond better to the challenges posed.

These conclusions of the conference as well as the analytical presentations made at the conference are available on the ISPO web server http://www.ipso.cec.be/esis. All the findings of the survey are also available as well as the recently released database of projects.

Welcomed as a great success, this conference has been an opportunity to improve the understanding of the issues, to elaborate IS strategies and to assess better the practical issues with respect to the development of new projects and partnerships. Although early yet, some preliminary conclusions are already evident as presented below.

Preliminary Conference Conclusions

The discussions during the parallel sessions of the conference were centred around the following questions:

• Defining success factors of projects and actions

- Incorporating awareness as clear strategy for motivating participants

- Ensure clear leadership and the high motivation of promoters and the commitment of key players

- Integrating the project in a general strategy for change (e.g. administrative reform, political re-engineering etc.). It is clear that there is a need for an integrated strategy for change and that high levels of awareness and clear leadership is needed in order to generate motivated participation and commitment.

- Long term commitment (e.g. contractual commitments between partners)

• Identifying main barriers to overcome

- Inertia and resistance to change

- Lack of awareness among potential end users and decision makers which causes weak demand for services

- Access costs for certain types of applications are prohibiting to certain categories of users

- Infrastructure constraints are particularly important for applications with a social dimension

- Tendency to opt for a competitive approach between projects where collaboration between players would provide better results for all concerned

- Low of consumer confidence in the use of the Internet as users particularly with respect to security, privacy, uses and product quality

- Low of availability of information to consumers in their own languages

- Lack of guidance on their rights of consumers in the information society

• Best practice elements

- Multi-disciplinary applications should be favoured

- Involvement of policy makers, researchers, industry and users as early as possible in the design of the projects

- Promote the availability of public information on-line

- Open and flexible approach - e.g. by Memoranda of understanding between relevant players - should be promoted

- Guidance tools should be incoprorated (e.g. mapping the net, catalogues, information brokers, search engines)

- Design of applications to include as wide access features as possible

- Public sector procurement of IS applications should include a "design-for-all" clause (e.g. to take into consideration persons with disabilities)

- Actively promote inter-operable, user friendly systems with multilingual facilities

- Promote the development of new business practices and the promotion of standards

- Promote the exchange of information and findings between different initiatives/projects across Europe

- Enhance the catalyst role of local and regional players particularly for applications targeting SMEs

- Promote the development of a clear, easy to understand and neutral tax environment

- Actively promote the participation of consumer organisations

- Promote the learning opportunities offered by the creative use of ICTs

- Where appropriate, promote common structures and guidelines for access to the information

- Involve the traditional media in the awareness plans

- Promote the participation of multiplier groups (e.g. associations, fora etc)

- Development of clear strategies and incentives for the development of public/private partnerships

- Constant review of evolving consumer and citizens needs

- Ensure that sufficient funding is available from the start of the projects

• Recommendations for further actions to the Commission and/or local and national administrations

- Continue to monitor the information society activities at local/regional and national level.

- Continue to put considerable effort into increasing public awareness but also in highlighting the relevance of information society for the way we work, live and are educated. The Information Society Forum will continue to play an important role and will be organising a major awareness event in 1999 - the Information Society Day.

- The importance of the development of public - private partnerships for the launching of initiatives was evident and the Commission and the Member States, regional and local authorities need to further promote this aspect.

- On the basis of the work done so far within ESIS, other related activities at Member State level and internationally, there is a need to launch a global discussion at appropriate fora on the methodological aspects of monitoring developments in the information society.

- Further promote the development of synergies between projects and initiatives and to minimise any effort being wasted on "rediscovering the wheel". To this aim, a workshop will be organised by ISPO in 1998 in order to further discuss the development of synergies between inventories, as well as discuss the methodological aspects of monitoring information society developments.

- Promote the development of suitable content which reflects the needs and values of the European citizens

- Support the launching of the proposed measures to help disadvantaged social groups actively participate in the Information Society developments in order to promote social inclusion.

- Promote further projects which focus on enhancing the democratic rights and participatory mechanisms for citizens, traditional manufacturing and SME’s.

- Promote the better understanding of the optimal use of information society technologies for environmental impact reduction and the promotion of a wider business and public awareness of the sustainability options for a "Model Europe" approach.

- Provide a good example by the commitment of the European Union Institutions and Member State governments to use the new ICT tools as much as possible in their everyday management procedures.

- Promote the development of a European standard for Internet content selection which will reflect European values.

- Provide guidance on the interactive use of the Internet for minors

It is clear that the Information Society poses a communication challenge for all concerned and in particular for the media. This conference ended with a Round Table bringing together members of the media and it was clear that the media should fulfil their role as communicators in awaking the general public and motivating people to actively participate in the developments of the information society. Additional activities focused on journalists and the media should therefore be organised in order to highlight this communication challenge.

Background information on ESIS

The ESIS (European Survey of Information Society ) initiative has just reached its first birthday and it already provides for transparency in information society developments in the Member States:

• ESIS provides a monitoring mechanism of legal, policy and regulatory development across the Member States.

• ESIS also enables the Commission and all national and local policy makers to listen to the voice of those involved in launching information society and to better understand the precise nature of any barriers they encounter. Currently detailed information on a statistically significant sample of over 1100 projects is available.

• ESIS currently tracks 470 promotion actions - providing information on national/regional/local calls for proposals, surveys, expert groups and fora - that have been set up.

• ESIS provides information on the availability of alternative infrastructures, on basic technology indicators (e.g. PCs and mobile phones per inhabitant etc.), as well as a "who is who" of persons in information society in each of the Member States.

Following the EU-CEEC conference in October there is a ministerial decision to extend ESIS to the CEEC countries and extension to the Mediterranean countries is also envisaged.

The results of the ESIS project are available on the ISPO Web site at:

http://www.ispo.cec.be/esis

Contact details for further information:
Tel: 00 322 296 8800 Fax: 00 322 299 4170 or
e-mail: Androulla.Kaminara@ispo.cec.be