Digital Agenda for Europe - the new EU Commissioner's priorities

Just before Christmas a first round of hearings of the European Parliament with the proposed new EU Commissioners took place - in written form with responses to questionnaires provided by the parliament.

For the ICT sector, the program and ideas of the new Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Ms Neelie Kroes, are, for sure, of utmost interest. Ms Kroes' responses in the parliament questions are available online.

In this document Commissioner Kroes outlines 4 major priorities:

I intend to develop the European Digital Agenda in close cooperation with the European Parliament and the Council as well as with my Commission colleagues. My initial priorities are: (i) building the high speed networks of the future; (ii) making the online single market a reality; (iii) ensuring that all citizens participate in the information society; and (iv) generating more, better targeted support for ICT research and innovation. Both citizens and industry have a role to play in driving innovation, whether big or small, incumbent or challenger, blue-chip or start-up. (p. 4)

At the end of the document, in the section with the forward looking title "Developing Policy for a Digital Citizenship, Commissioner Kroes indicates a programmatic approach to ICT standardisation for Europe:

I will pay special attention to Europe's contribution to producing high-quality open ICT standards. (p. 7)

Finally, she concludes with mentioning some areas for action inclduing the following:

Further key actions include: following up on the eGovernment, e-Inclusion and eHealth Action Plans and Ministerial declarations. I will also be considering proposals for a Regulation on the eCall vehicle safety system and for the development of our policy on ICT for Energy Efficiency. (p. 7)

I find this a very promising document. Commissioner Kroes includes all major areas for action around ICT, she includes the relevance of open standards - simply a great outlook for what is needed and of areas of action by the Commission.

Happy New Year - and a great new decade to all

Happy New Year ! Yes, indeed, we are in 2010 now. Almost unbelievable, isn't it? A new decade. With a new horizon 2020 and beyond.

The German newspaper FAZ had a great article in its edition of last Saturday (lead article of the Feuilleton part). It was about predictions for the future - especially in the telecommunications and internet sector. While diagnosing that most of these predictions are most of the times either totally wrong or so predictable that they are hardly predictions, the article focusses on some predictions which colleagues from IBM Germany made in 1987 about what the world will be like in 2010. And these IBM predictions from 1987 are remakable in the sense that many of them have actually come true.

The predictions include one about the ubiquitous use of computers and computing intelligence in our daily life and working environments, about the new ways of communication (including electronic mail) in our office environments, about the increasing role of IT as assistive technologies (e.g. in the area of accessibility), and about the fact that Artificial Intelligence technologies will not see a breakthrough and lead to a symbiosis of the human brain and computing.

For everyone who is able to read German I can heartily recommend this article also available in the FAZ online edition.

I have so far not seen any serious predictions about this new decade and what the world will be like in 2020. It looks as if the last decade - and in particular the last years - have shaken up all elements of both the societal, the political and the economic world order that potential predictors prefer to remain quiet and see the future rather unpredictable.

In the area of IT and communication technologies, though, there are some clear trends regarding smarter ways of working, smarter ways of doing things, new ways of social interaction and networking, new strategies of democratic participation and mind setting in the public sphere. It will definitely be a challenging new decade with a lot of potential for creativity and new ideas. Many good reasons to be excited about it....

Cornerstones of an Innovation Society (Part II): Embracing Change

Innovation always means change. Innovators are hungry for change, for improvement, for finding better, smarter ways of doing things. And change always means that things will be different. Where people don't like to see things getting different there is no room for innovation. I assume there is no dispute on that.

Innovators drive change. They don't wait till they are changed. About a decade ago the small book “Who moved my cheese” from Spencer Johnson provided an entertaining and inspiring allegory on the need to embrace change and to actively get involved into working on the future and driving change.

Now, for sure all of us constantly see situations where people, groups or organisations are hesitant to accept change because they fear of loosing something, be it status, influence, market dominance, etc. The consequence is resistance to change – which is, in turn, a barrier to innovation.

It is, therefore, important to create a mentality for innovation. It is up to everyone of us to become more open to change, to constantly look and strive for change rather than waiting for others to start change processes. After all, those who do not drive change, will be changed. In his speech at the European Innovation Summit President Barroso talked about the task of “nurturing the mindset” (p.2). And for sure we need to go ahead with good example and develop the proper mindset ourselves.

The following 5 imperatives are fundamental for a culture of change and we constantly need to investigate ourselves:

1. Are there changes or modernisations that I consider necessary or desirable?

2. Are there areas where I am resistant to change and therefore block or try to avoid?

3. What prevents me from going ahead?

4. Am I open for the necessary changes and the consequences?

5. Am I ready to invest time and effort in taking responsibility for driving change?

These imperatives are certainly not inclusive. We can work on them to make them more precise. Suggestions more than welcome. But what is clear, I think: A successful innovation society needs a culture of change, a mindset that accepts and embraces movement, improvement, change – in other words: a mindset that is always ready to innovate.

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History:

See also my blog entry on Cornerstones of an Innovation Society (Part I): Openness

New era starts in Europe today as Lisbon treaty comes into force

After a long time of debate and negotiation as well as of ratification in the member states the Lisbon treaty comes into force today. This treaty defines the new constitution for Europe - with two main new introductions:

1. a permanent President of the European Council
2. a High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

For these two posts Herman Van Rompuy and Baroness Catherine Ashton were recently chosen.

The German newspaper FAZ gives on its website a good chart today illustrating the functions and organisations according to the Lisbon treaty.

See also the official EU website on the Treaty of Lisbon and the summary of the new structure at The Treaty at a Glance.

New European Commission is taking shape

President Barroso announced today his new Commission. See the details about who will be responsible for which department in the Commission press release. Just to mention two of the new Commissioners: Ms Neelie Kroes from the Netherlands who was formerly responsible for DG Competition will now be lead the Digital Agenda - which will incorporate much of what was formerly DG INFSO. And the Italian Commissioner Mr Antonio Tajani will be responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship, much of what was formerly DG ENTR. Both will also act as Vice-Presidents of the Commission.

EU Commission conference on Standards Education - my personal take-aways

Yesterday the European Commission held a conference on standards education titled “Educating a New Generation of ICT Standards Professionals”. There was a focus on information and communication technologies (ICT) in relation to standards education. Part of the objective was to get an overview on the initiatives for standards education that are already available; to identify whether there are specifics for ICT that need to be considered and if so, which; and finally to come to some thinking towards recommendations and concrete actions.

To begin with, the workshop was of highest quality. Congratulations to the Commission for making such an interesting and inspiring event possible. The workshop brought together high capacity experts in the subject matter and policy makers as well as people from all stakeholders in ICT standardisation.

Not being an expert on standards education myself, my major take-aways from the conference are:

1. Standards education is an important topic that needs to be considered more in the discussions around EU standards policy reform.
   

2. Standards education is in itself a diverse field targetting very different audiences. Be it the standards development organisations that are interested in providing courses relative to the work in their institutions; be it academia looking at how to integrate the topic of standardisation into education curricula; be it small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are looking for focussed information and for channels and multipliers to reach out to the many SMEs locally; be it consumer representatives that are in need of training and support for being properly equipped to represent consumer interests in standards matters.
   

3. To achieve a better level of knowledge about standardisation is important given the relevance of standardisation for innovation and competitiveness. This aims at the technical aspects as well as at business and legal aspects.
   

4. Very many things are already available, projects going on in standards education. What seems to be required is to gather and consolidate what is around and strive for a next level of cooperation between the actors in standards education. The ISO representative made a passionate plea into this direction.
   

5. The real specifics of the ICT sector are not yet covered, though. It became clear in the discussions of the last panel and in the presentations from W3C and IETF that there is some common ground equal for all standardisation, but that ICT standardisation has different ways for doing its work, yet with high effectiveness and efficiency.
   

There were also some side-remarks that were very interesting. These included above all the various statements stressing the need for openness and open standards in the ICT sector. I should like to add: for promoting the implementation of software interoperability and thus for facilitating innovation.

Finally, I think supporting activities in standards education can be a task for all of us who are active as “professionals” in the standardisation. All large companies have programmes for supporting academia in knowledge transfer or for working with networks and clusters. This could be a way of offering support and bridging the gap between practical knowledge and the need for education.

I left the conference with the impression that much can be done on the short range without too many efforts. There needs to be some funding, e.g. from the European Commission as well as from national and even regional governments, which, in my view, would be justified given that education is a societal task. Such funding would help to get started fast in some way, e.g. creating pilot projects with some universities for including standardisation into their curricula etc. These initial activities would, for sure, not solve all the issues. But I am a strong believer in piecemeal process and incremental enhancement and expansion.

French Prime Minster formally adopted French Interoperability Guide

As announced by the French government yesterday, the French Prime Minister formally approved the French Interoperability Guide, the Référentiel Général d'Iinteropérabilité (RGI). The RGI outlines the needs for achieving Interoperability for eGovernment service provision and public administrations' IT infrastructures. It gives a clear commitment to openness and provides yet another successful, forward-looking implementation of the principles outlined in the European Interoperability Framework (EIF).