European Survey of the Information Society
The first ESIS (European Survey of the Information Society) conference, organized by the European Commission's Information Society Project Office (ISPO), took place in Brussels on 18 and 19 March 1998. ESIS monitors the legal, policy and regulatory development of the Information Society across the Member States. The conference aimed to present an overview of Information Society developments, and to determine success factors, barriers, best practices, strategies for promoting synergies and public-private partnerships, as well as provide proposals for follow-up actions. Participants came from a wide range of backgrounds, including representatives from industry, trade unions, the welfare sector, education and high-level national decision-makers in the Information Society field. The conference also featured addresses from Commissioner Martin Bangemann and Members of the European Parliament. The conference also included eight panels covering topics such as employability and work organization, public administration and democracy, social integration, SMEs and sustainable development. Several case studies were presented, together with the relevant ESIS results. The main findings of ESIS presented at the conference were: - Nearly all Member States have launched national Information Society initiatives in order to help create an overall national strategy in promoting Information Society developments; - However, these Information Society projects tend to be isolated and few links exist to other projects; - Almost 50% of projects address education and training, at least partly, while electronic commerce is the objective of one-third of projects; - There is strong involvement from national, regional and local authorities in projects; - SMEs are the primary target of 25% of the projects; - Regarding funding, the survey revealed that 70% of projects have national funding, 35% of projects have Community funding, whilst only 14% of projects have private funding, and only 6% have funding from banks. - The main barriers to project development included high development costs, infrastructure costs and the lack of essential human resources. The preliminary conclusions drawn from the survey show that greater efforts should be put into increasing public awareness. The Information Society Forum will continue to play an important role and will be organising a major awareness event, the Information Society Day in 1999. The importance of the development of public/private partnerships for the launching of initiatives was also highlighted and this aspect needs to be further promoted. The need to launch a global discussion on the methodological aspects of monitoring developments in the Information Society was also highlighted.