1994 can be considered as the kick-off period for IS strategies preparation by public authorities.

Following President Clinton’s announcements and in the context of the different key documents published by the European Commission (President Delors White book, Bangemann Report on " Europe and the Global Information Society: recommendations to the European Council " in May 1994, and the European Action Plan " Europe’s way to the information " of July 1994), public authorities realised that adequate policy was needed to facilitate the transition towards the so-called Information Society. Therefore, they have started to prepare national and regional strategies in order to prepare the entry in the Information Society.

ESIS has identified a number of documents and policies allowing to provide an overview of this evolution at the European scale and to learn about similarities and differences according to countries, their priorities, their methods of actions, etc.

Several inputs have been analysed in order to prepare this presentation:

• the content of the promotional IS activities in the EU Member States, and especially the reports, studies, creation of experts groups, forums etc.
• the regulatory developments
• the content of the ESIS database, as IS strategies are reflected into the projects which are launched by the public bodies and private actors.

What do we learn ?

IS national strategies: approaches and progress

Most national governments have released their national strategy.

A group of countries have started earlier than the others and published Reports and action plans as early as 1994 or 1995. It is the case of the Netherlands (National Action Programme Electronic Highways) and of the Nordic Countries, especially Denmark with its "Info-society 2000, Finland with "Finland towards the IS" or Sweden. (see the "history" of national IS strategies).

These countries are now at the stage where new strategies are being prepared. The other governments had a later start and strategies or national programmes have been published in 1996 (Germany, Luxembourg, UK), in 1997 (Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal) and also at the beginning of this year (French Government Action Plan, Italy in its Government Plan 1999-2001).

The methodologies used to elaborate these strategies are rather different:

• in some countries, specific organisations have been created in order to pilot the process (IT-Commission in Sweden, Mission for the IS in Portugal, IS steering Committee in Ireland, Comité Info 2000 in Luxembourg, IS Forum of the Presidency of the Council of Ministries in Italy, recent Communication Forum in Greece) ; in other countries, it has been directly managed by the ministerial departments in charge of the telecommunications or the economy, even by the Prime Minister (France).
• In some cases, work has been prepared with the help of high level groups of experts (Austria) but also Forums associating public and private partners from all sectors and the general public (through Internet Forums for example).
• Parliaments (an often the Senates) have also played an important role, as catalysts of government action, as controllers and as topical contributors via various reports.

Some national strategies appears as pluri-annual documents (e.g. ISI for the 1996-2000 period) with a one-year updating process (Finland, Denmark with its IT policy Action Plan 1995, 1996, 1997, Netherlands, Sweden, etc.) and a evaluating/auditing system at the end.

Some strategies are detailed and result in associated action plans, including funding. Others are more of a comprehensive framework, with measures but no precise deadlines.

Finally, besides these national strategies, governments often develop sectoral strategies and action plan targeted at specific sectors, and more particularly in the educational and electronic commerce ("EDI Action plan").

IS national strategies: main objectives and content

Each of these national strategies has its specific aspects, depending on several factors: the political situation and administrative situation (centralised or decentralised government), the degree of interventionism of the State in the economy, the economical and social situation, the level of development of existing telecommunication infrastructures and companies/households equipment, the presence of leading telecom companies, the degree of awareness of the population and companies, the legal framework, etc.

However, they have many common features:

• In almost all strategies, the starting statement is as follows : "the transformation inducted by the development and convergence of ICT on the business and the society as a whole can bring many benefits: how to achieve these benefits ?"

• Three main elements are included in the Terms of Reference of most national strategies:
  • identify the issues associated with the emergence of the IS
  • assess the country’s readiness to benefit from the opportunities deriving from the IS (diagnosis of the situation in terms of awareness of people, use of ICT by companies/sectors and government, ICT skills, infrastructures and regulation, etc.)
  • identify appropriate strategic responses and actions require to derive maximum benefit from the IS: objectives, sectoral strategies, means, programmes to be launched and flagship projects, etc.

• The major common element is that governments tend to consider that the development of the IS is the responsibility of the private forces and that the role of public sector is more of a facilitator and a catalyst, including accompanying measures.

• Another common feature has to do with the focus on technology and telecommunication infrastructures. However, looking at the newly published or recently updated strategies, this trend is slightly revised: investment is increasingly focused on content and on the human factor instead of technology, i.e. a policy of "people and places": promoting awareness and training, focusing on the living and the working conditions; concentrating on the protection of the consumers and civil rights, supporting grassroots projects elaborated by small communities, favouring SMEs, retaining the sustainable development priority, etc.

As a good illustration, we can quote the 4 central questions introducing the new strategy of Denmark (Action for change), which are: "Have we secured the rights of the individual in the information society? Are employees acquiring the necessary skills quickly enough? What does it take to open the public sector and revitalise the interaction of citizens and government? Does our society possess the necessary security solutions?" Another example is Finland where it has been expressed some time ago criticisms of the initial national strategy plan and the wish that more attention had to be paid to the regional and local levels and the content issues, as well as the educational and cultural aspects.

The different roles of national governments can be summarised in 4 key words:

1. The government is first a regulator:

• Create the regulatory conditions for an open competitive marketplace and better access to markets;
• Implement regulations and policies to ensure protection of citizens/consumers and security business: privacy protection, protection against crime, IPR, protection of minors (Internet Charter), labour protection - security of payment, data protection, security of information

2. It is a promoter:

• Act as catalyst for new kinds of partnerships (e.g. public-private) that would encourage demand for networks, the growth of applications, and the use of the new technologies.
• Promote R&D in the field of ICT(national R&D projects, research networks) and contribute to the strengthening of the ICT industry and high tech companies
• stimulate the emergence of projects in selected areas, by various incentive mechanisms

3. It is more and more an "educator" with two aspects:

• it is considered that the degree to which the people or the companies are aware of the potential and positive impact of ICT is at the heart of the IS. Then, governments develop information campaigns, workshops, public displays, sectoral targeted actions (SMEs), etc.
• encourage training in ICT as well as their use in education, training and life-long learning

4. It is an integrator:

• Reduce inequalities concerning the access to NICT, be they social (specific social groups which have not access or cannot afford it) or regional (less favoured regions, rural areas): universal access, provide network infrastructure and computing facilities, reduction of telecommunications costs in specific areas; free Internet access in some cases, support "affirmative actions" for specific users groups.

Governmental action is focused :

• internally: new technologies must be used to cut costs and improve the delivery of government programmes and public services (better and cheaper services), to favour the open government or else to favour the business (electronic public tendering, less paper and administrative work for enterprises, etc.)
• towards the general public and companies within the country
• at an international scale : for an international co-ordination and co-operation, at the EU scale but also at a wider echelon: compliance with international standards ; participation in international programmes (G7, OECD)

The regional and local involvement

Cities and regions have also progressively developed their own IS strategies.

Of course, this involvement of regions and local authorities depends on the degree of decentralisation in each country, which means less or more autonomy, competencies and associated human and financial resources. Therefore, on the following slides, it appears clearly that most regional and local strategies are identified in the Federal or largely decentralised countries. The situation also depends on other factors, such as economic development (cf. "World class regions" - most favoured regions - having developed earlier IS strategies), the emergence of a regional leader, the presence in the region of a group of dynamic companies - IT-related or not -, the level of openness of the region, including its presence in international actions and networks, etc

The support of the EU seems to have played an important role:

• by the RISI programmes for the regions ;
• by the support to the emergence of "digital cities" or "Information city highways", the creation of European urban networks and regional and local platforms as a forum for exchange and discussion and preparation of local strategies (cf. Telematics application for urban and rural areas, ACTS, Bangemann Challenge, LOCREGIS, etc.)

IS regional and local strategies: main objectives and content

Then, regions and cities have defined their objectives and elaborated a strategy as a basis for creating an action plan. Some regions have created ad-hoc organisational structures in which are integrated all the actors related to the strategy and action plan elaboration. In order to help generate awareness and a widely shared consensus within regional forces around the strategy, they also organise regional conferences and develop dissemination tools, such as Web site, newsletter, Issues papers, etc.

It is no easy task to synthesise what can be found in the regional strategies and related methodologies, due to the diversity of the regions, problems and approaches.

What can be said, as concerns the regions, is that they consider that globalisation cannot take place without localisation. In order to reconciliate the global and local levels and to improve the economic vitality and quality of life in the region, regions have to facilitate the implementation and use of advanced information infrastructure, and to initiate co-operative infrastructure projects that demonstrate the positive value of the applications of technology in education, healthcare, local government, business and the home.

Promotion of regional economic development is a central aim of all strategies, as well as social cohesion, the idea behind many activities being to prevent society being divided into the „haves" and the „have–nots", i.e. those participating and those not participating in the new communication networks.

As concerns the cities, they mean to take care of the social and economic impact of the Information Society deployment. Not very many comprehensive strategies have been released yet.

However, some cities are developing more global strategies, considering that there are many opportunities to be met (the modernisation of service provision to citizens, the re-organisation of traffic and mobility, a new organisation of assistance and help to less favoured people, new means to support for social and cultural activities, new actions for the environment and the quality of urban life) on one hand, but also several risks to be avoided on the other hand (growing unemployment, social exclusion and the widening of the gap between those who have and those who have not).

4 key-words can also been used in order to summarise the main elements of the regional and local strategies:

1. Coordinator and "provider": many strategies are actively dealing with the provision of the technical infrastructure for improving the speed and quality of network transmission at regional level, at competitive price (regional telematic networks and platforms). Some have set up this infrastructure using their own resources, but the strategy pursued by the majority is to involve established (telephone) companies in local and regional projects. Then they to work with telecommunications services providers, network and equipment suppliers to engage and accelerate their commitment to support the region’s development.

Acting as coordinators, many regions include in their regional plan the launching of "umbrella projects", containing new applications and services for their own use and for the social and economic actors.

2. They play an important role as educators and awareness bodies, in schools for municipalities and for higher education and universities for regions (adaptation of the educational system). They also tend to develop new forms of work organisation, especially teleworking.

3. They act also as an integrator, within the region (between cities and rural areas for example) or towards the less favoured people. They are also well placed to test local democracy applications.

4. They are also promoters, even if the lack of resources often prohibits the launch of local calls for projects. But they are more oriented towards projects of SMEs or the identification and promotion of new employment niches. They also tend to support new forms of partnerships, networks, co-operation and strategic alliances inside the region, notably between universities, companies, R&D organisations, etc.

Projects coordinators

Generally speaking, a large range of types of coordinators projects included in the ESIS database. However, projects tend to be coordinated by "public players" from the public administration and research sectors rather than by "private" market players from the converging industries.

In fact, the majority of projects are directly associated with either local, regional or national government (29% of coordinators) or with Research centres, universities or high schools (23% of coordinators).

As concerning Universities, the know–how concentrated in the universities, their acquaintance with ICT use, the traditional public funding and support of this sector, including networking systems, (and it is clearly a priority in IS strategy) as well as their capacity to be a connecting link between industry and public authorities explain that these institutions are playing a decisive role. The research and universities sector seems more important as coordinating partners in Luxembourg (53% of coordinators) and Denmark (40%). As concerning the Governments, they play a leading role as projects coordinators in Austria (21%), Luxembourg (23%) and Portugal (21%).

Within the public administration, local and regional authorities are those who play a major role, as they represent 19% of projects coordinators overall. It is interesting to note that they play a more active role in Sweden (38%), Finland (29%) and UK (32%). Moreover, if we look at projects involving regional and local authorities, we find 37% of projects overall. It confirms what was reflected in the IS strategies.

The third group is formed by "IT Consulting, Software House, Hardware manufacturer" (14%). They are better represented as coordinators in Italy (28%), Spain (25%) and Germany (24%).

An other important issue of the statistical analysis is the applications areas of the projects.

There were 9 domains which appear on the slide (trade/commerce, manufacturing, Education/training, Healthcare, public administration, etc.) What are the results ?

The ESIS database is constituted by a mix of projects, addressing a variety of business and community needs: respondents have stated altogether several application areas, which accounts to an average of 2,2 applications areas per project. But "Education and training" is clearly the leading application area of IS projects in the EU.

These types of projects are highly represented for two main reasons:

• Even if a number of projects do not have education/training as their main focus, many of them include educational matters in their scope e.g. courses in working with ICT, training for specific target groups (unemployed people, women, people in rural areas, SMEs), etc.

• Education and training are more and more considered as a priority in national and international policies and programmes. In fact, it is now a widely accepted belief that the IS will facilitate the ‘Learning Society’ and the concept of lifelong learning. I will not go into details as it will be widely discussed tomorrow during the panels. I will just underline that this high level of projects in the database follows the fact that a lot of national government and Education departments have issued sectorial strategies and actions plans which include implications for IS infrastructure and content - increasing the prominence of IT on the national curriculum and equipping educational institutions with ICTs for example - and launched programmes and projects. Let’s take the example of primary education and schools : in Austria (Austrian School Network"), in Finland, the Ministry of Education and Culture has budgeted nearly 41 MECUS for IS activities in education and culture sectors for 1998, in France (ambitious action plan and creation of the Educnet Network - 227 Mecus over 3 years) ; in Germany (initiative "Schulen and Netz"); in Ireland, where the Government and Telecom Eireann has launched at the end of November 1997 an IT 2000 programme for schools which, among other actions, will provide 60 000 multimedia computers to all schools within three years.

If we compared the geographic level of development effort of EU-funded projects with non-EU funded, It is not really surprising to see that EU encourages trans-regional and even international collaboration, as it is a major concern of EU programs.

In fact, when one compares the statistics on the subset of projects cofinanced by the Commission and the subset of non EU-funded projects, we can see that two "less favoured sectors" ie transports/environmental and manufacturing application areas are better represented among EU funded projects :

• manufacturing : 22% to be compared with 10%
• transports/environment: 22% to be compared with 14%.

On the contrary, we can note that there are less EU funded projects in the field of arts/culture/entertainment than for the non-EU funded projects.