Commission proposes benchmarking indicators for eEurope 2005
The Commission has published a proposed set of benchmarking indicators for the eEurope 2005 Action Plan which it will ask the Council to endorse at the meeting of the Telecommunications Council on 5 December. The benchmarking indicators will allow policymakers to monitor the progress of the eEurope 2005 Action Plan in certain key policy areas, such as Internet and broadband use, online public services, the e-business environment and information security. In preparing its set of indicators, the Commission sought to analyse the lessons of benchmarking the last Action Plan, eEurope 2002, which established principles on which the next benchmarking exercise will take place. The conclusions of this analysis included: the need for statistical indicators broken down by, for example, age, gender, sector, to supplement the key policy indicators, the importance of third country data in order to compare the EU's performance with the best in the world, and the need to disseminate results on the eEurope website as quickly as possible. This analysis also takes into account the enlargement process, and warns that from 2004 onwards benchmarking will need to take account of the needs and specificities of the candidate countries. Accession countries will also be invited to take part in Eurostat surveys from 2003, as well as additional Commission-run surveys as soon as possible. In monitoring the uptake of the Internet in Europe, the Commission proposes to collect data on the percentage of households with access to the Internet and the percentage of those who regularly use it, the proportion of people who use the Internet in their normal work routine, and the cost of Internet access. Supplementary indicators will include data on what types of device people use to access the Internet and the proportion of companies with websites. A key target of the eEurope 2005 Action Plan is to ensure the provision of online EU and national public services. To assess the progress of this policy, the Commission suggests a key indicator showing the number of basic public services fully available online, and supplementary data showing the percentages of individuals and companies using the Internet to access public services broken down by purpose, such as obtaining information or returning forms. Also falling under the heading of online public services are e-learning and e-health, with indicators focussing on the number of pupils per computer with Internet connection, the percentage of the population using the Internet to seek health information, and the proportion of general practitioners using electronic patient records. The Commission's proposed e-business indicators will reveal the percentage of companies' total turnover derived from e-commerce, and will use composite indicators on adoption and use of information and communication technologies to assess the e-business readiness of enterprises. In analysing Europe's information security infrastructure, it is proposed that data be collected showing the percentage of individuals and organisations with Internet access having encountered security problems. The final area looks at the progress of broadband penetration, and proposed indicators include the proportion of companies, public administration offices and homes that have high-speed cable access.