The key challenge for policy makers today is that ICT has become omnipresent; it is everywhere around us, in our homes and at work.  But we continue to treat it as if it were a specific sector, a high-tech industry that is based on R&D.  But in fact ICT is more like energy or health.  It requires both sector-specific and cross-sector policies.  ICT has become far more complex.  It is true that most industrial sectors have developed their own ICT policies, but in the past 10 years the role of ICT has shifted from work contexts to our personal lives. This means that policy needs to change; but it hasn’t.

 

Our work for the Swedish Presidency demarcated three key policy areas.  Firstly, what sort of society do we want?  With ICT becoming so all pervasive, so fundamental to our economy and to the functioning of government, then is it essential that we do not exclude people. Particular attention needs to be paid to education, not only to schooling, but to adult education too. The EU needs to make the transition to a knowledge economy, but we have to do it with an ageing population.  Therefore we will all need to work longer; and this means that we will have to keep working on our knowledge and skills, throughout our careers.  Also, we need to think about how ICT can help elderly people stay productive, for example via video conferencing.  It is essential that we think 20-30 years ahead to prepare ourselves.  It isn’t simply about R&D; it is also about education and helping elderly people use ICT.  Other issues that need to be addressed in this category are privacy and safety; protecting people, especially children, from malicious threats.

 

The second main policy area concerns the role of ICT in the economy. Europe will only go forward if we succeed in making the transition to a knowledge economy; and ICT is pivotal to that. This implies that Europe has to focus more on digital literacy and raising the standard of education. Also, ICT needs to be stimulated more among SMEs since they are the base of the European economy. We really need ambitious targets here. Unfortunately, most governments are doing just the opposite at present; they’re cutting back due to the economic crisis.

 

The third key policy pillar will have to address the role of ICT in the green economy.  Europe has set itself ambitious targets for reducing energy consumption and emissions. ICT does have a negative impact obviously, given the power consumption of data centres and network infrastructure, but it also has potential of being a very powerful enabler of energy savings.  

 

Obviously there are more areas that we need to pay attention to. Take healthcare: Europe generally has good healthcare but the costs are increasing too rapidly. There is so much potential to use ICT to improve our healthcare systems, both in terms of quality and cost. Diagnosis especially can be speedier, more accurate, and it can be done on a remote basis. Care of the frail and elderly will be a an increasingly severe problem, where ICTs can help, not just in pure care terms but also in support for extending working life, a growing need as our pension plans begin to fail. 

 

Justice is another major opportunity.  Consider the costs of our court systems; there is still huge potential there to apply technology.  Also, how can we reduce the costs—but improve the effectiveness—of policing, for example via improved surveillance?  And migration: how can we reduce the impact of migration and keep families together; how can we improve the integration process?

 

But to accomplish all of these things governments will need to take a much broader, more integrated approach to ICT policy.  At one level this has to do with the ICT infrastructure; making sure that the next-generation networks are built as quickly as possible.  This is not simply about laying fibre to the home.  Governments also need to pay attention to open standards, to regulating the market, to consumer protection.  Take document standards, for example: how do we make sure that these are durable, so that we protect our archives? Our dependence on ICT is increasing; therefore we really do need better governance.

  

E-Government has not been very successful to date, for various reasons. For example, when it comes to government services we should not be forcing people into a digital straightjacket.  On the contrary, we need to give people more options, not fewer. We should be enabling people, opening up opportunities, instead of limiting them. The key opportunity in politics is to move toward some form of participative government, as opposed to the representative system we have now. But this issue remains very contentious. The key debate here pivots on the supposed intelligence or stupidity of the crowd. There are two schools of thought. One group argues that the crowd does, in the long run, behave in a balanced way. Others disagree.

 

Security is another emerging priority. We need to anticipate the unthinkable. What would happen if we receive a malicious attack on our e-government infrastructure?  As we become more reliant on technology, the impact could be disastrous. Imagine, such events could disable hospitals; they could kill people.  

Industrial policy can have a major impact. In the United States a great deal of technological innovation originally came from military projects. For example, the internet and GPS both have their roots in military projects. Similarly, the governments in Japan and South Korea have highly focused industrial policies that have helped create high-tech industries.  South Korea especially is a nice example. After the Asian crisis they started focusing very heavily on digital literacy and digital infrastructure. In the process they created strong domestic demand for technology products, which boosted their local high-tech industries.  

 

In the EU we do not seem to very keen on such proactive industrial policy. The question we need to ask ourselves is how we can stimulate the domestic market for technology, because that in turn strengthens our export potential. The EU market is so large; we have such potential to absorb ICT products and services. We already have technical leadership in a range of areas, but we seem to lack the domestic market to translate that technical leadership into industrial leadership.

 

The role of smaller companies—SMEs—is crucial too. It is so important to develop strong clusters of high-tech SMEs. Again, in the EU we seem to struggle in this; if you compare us to the United States and Japan. 

 

Essentially it is about creating the right ecosystem for entrepreneurship and innovation. It is a combination of things: we need to look at the demand and supply side of things. How do we increase digital literacy? How do we boost domestic demand? How do we transition R&D to production? How do we stimulate competition in the ICT market? The potential clearly is there to do so much more.