Abstract
The economic and social implications of the Information Society
Technologies will continue to grow in importance. Within the
IST Programme Key Action II is supporting Europe's ambition to
become the world leader in this area. The paper reviews Key Action
II's activities over the past three years and looks forward to
2002 and the Sixth European Framework Programme.
1. Introduction
Information Society Technologies (IST) are radically transforming
the economy and our daily lives, whether at work, at home or
while on the move. The IST sector has grown to become one of
the most important in the European economy. Today, with an annual
turnover of EUR 2 trillion, it already provides employment to
more than 12 million people across Europe and impacts the competitiveness
of all sectors of the economy. But IST is not just a powerful
engine of economic growth. It creates opportunities for addressing
major societal challenges in areas as diverse as employment,
education, government and healthcare. Finally, it is also the
source of new challenges that often require well co-ordinated
responses at the European level, from fighting the digital divide
to providing for a global information infrastructure that promotes
both trust and confidence.
Eighteen months ago, at the European Council in Lisbon, the
Union set an ambitious goal for itself: to become the most competitive
and most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world. At the
core of this ambition lies the need to promote the development
and broad adoption of novel technologies and practices for work
and business and to help develop and deploy technologies that
promote trust and confidence. Within the European IST Programme,
the initiative in New Methods of Work and Electronic Commerce
(IST - Key Action II) is playing a key role in helping achieve
the short-term objectives associated with the eEurope 2002 Action
Plan as well as in promoting European innovation in e-business
and e-work through a number of well co-ordinated research and
development efforts.
As Europe works towards preparation of its Sixth Framework
Programme for Research, currently expected to start in late 2002,
now is a good time to reflect on some of the main contributions
of Key Action II in light of the policy objectives set at the
European Summit of Lisbon and follow-up meetings in Stockholm
and Gothenburg. We also outline how to best build on the achievements
of this Key Action, as we transition into the next European Framework
Programme for Research. A key element of this transition involves
the development of a more integrated European Research Area that
encourages cross-border industry-academia collaboration in an
environment that promotes innovation and participation of all
European researchers.
The emergence of the knowledge-based economy will not happen
over night. The recent demise of a number of e-commerce start-ups
has demonstrated that many early e-business models were simplistic
and that adoption of novel IST solutions and practices by businesses
and workers is a long and complex process. It is a process that
requires further research and development activities in key areas
of enterprise collaboration, usability, interoperability, security
and dependability, to name just a few, along with well co-ordinated
policy activities aimed at promoting the broader exploitation
and adoption of new technologies and practices, as they become
available. Below, we review activities launched by Key Action
II over the past 3 years that aim at doing just that.
2. e-Business and e-Work in Europe
While as a whole Europe was at first slow to adopt the Internet,
the situation is changing, thanks in part to well co-ordinated
efforts between Member States and the European
Commission. In some areas such as mobile phones, Europe is already
reaping the rewards of well co-ordinated research programmes
and policies, with mobile phone ownership now reaching 60 per
cent of the European population - well ahead of the United States
for instance.
In March 2000, Internet penetration in European homes was
at a low 18 per cent. In less than a year, this figure had jumped
to 31 per cent. Although there are continuing differences among
Member states, countries were adoption is the lowest are the
ones that have witnessed the fastest progression. When taking
Internet access from work, school and other non-home environment,
Internet penetration can be shown to have already reached 40
per cent of the European population, This fast progression in
Internet adoption is closely correlated with reduction in access
costs, as advocated in the eEurope action plan.
At the same time, the percentage of Internet users shopping
online and overall adoption of e-commerce practices remains quite
low. These low adoption levels continue to reflect concerns of
European citizens about fraud as well as the general limitations
of today's e-commerce solutions when it comes to ease of use.
New solutions for e-work have been slow to gain broad adoption
across Europe, suggesting the need for further awareness actions
as well as activities aimed at developing more suitable solutions.
The situation in business-to-business electronic commerce is
similar, suggesting again that today's solutions still fall short
of user expectations.
3. The European initiative in e-Work and e-Business
The European initiative in e-work and e-business supports
the research, development and adoption of novel IST technologies
and practices aimed at enhancing industrial competitiveness and
quality of work life in the emerging knowledge-based economy.
In practical terms, this broad mission translates into several
types of activities:
- Support for innovative medium- to long-term and high-risk
research projects with high potential payoffs;
- Support for take-up and dissemination activities aimed at
promoting the broad adoption of novel solutions for e-work and
e-business across Europe and at supporting other eEurope 2002
objectives;
- Socio-economic research aimed at monitoring and assessing
the development and impact of novel e-work and e-business technologies
and practices and at providing guidance to future research and
policy activities in this area.
3.1 Research Challenges
A number of medium to long-term research challenges still
need to be addressed to develop the tools and practices of tomorrow's
knowledge-based society. Key among them are issues relating to
knowledge management, namely the ability to capture, discover,
organise, reuse, share and even trade knowledge both within and
across organisations. In a society that suffers from an overabundance
of information, knowledge management technologies are required
to help people and organisations access and share the right information
at the right time. Another set of research challenges at the
core of Key Action II relates to the development of novel solutions
for e-work and e-commerce that exploit the increasingly pervasive
nature of the infrastructure, making it possible for people to
remain in contact with one another and to take advantage a plethora
of information services "anywhere, anytime". Central
to this theme of Mobile and Ubiquitous e-Work and e-Commerce
is the notion of context-awareness. The challenge here is to
develop technologies and tools that will be capable of understanding
the context within which we are operating such as the activities
we are engaged in, the people we are with, and the objectives
we are pursuing, and, based on this information, anticipate our
needs and provide us with access to relevant services. Developing
such solutions goes well beyond the development of smart sensors.
It requires the development of intelligent functionality capable
of reasoning about the tasks and goals of users, new solutions
for interacting with people as well as new standards for representing
and exchanging this information and for doing so while respecting
people's privacy.
Beyond the above, Key Action II supports focused research
efforts in several other strategic areas organised around the
following themes:
- Intelligent Workplaces for All, which focuses on the research
and development of innovative e-work environments that enhance
productivity, quality of work life and promote work practices
suitable for all.
- Smart Organisations is about the transformation of profit
and non-profit entities into agile, knowledge-driven organisations,
capable of adapting to ever changing market demands in today's
inter-networked economy. Emphasis is on the development of a
new generation of distributed and interoperable enterprise applications
and services.
- Dynamic Value Constellations explore novel IST solutions
and value creation model aimed at supporting market-driven value
constellations, where suppliers and consumers dynamically come
together in response to or in anticipation of new market opportunities.
- Trust in Information Infrastructures and Enhancing Security
in Electronic Transactions are about the development of scalable
solutions aimed at ensuring trust and security and at enhancing
privacy.
3.2 Take up and Dissemination Challenges
While larger high tech companies are often prompt to adopt
novel IST solutions and practices, many smaller companies find
it difficult to understand their benefits and what it takes to
successfully deploy them. Key Action II's focus here is on high
impact activities aimed at promoting the broad adoption and dissemination
of novel and secure solutions and practices in all areas of e-work
and e-commerce. These activities, which are closely tied to the
objectives of the eEurope initiative, place a particular emphasis
on regional and sectoral adoption of novel IST solutions by SMEs
and are closely co-ordinated with a variety of related efforts
such as regional and national initiatives and structural funds
programmes.
3.3 Socio-Economic Research Activities
The objective of these activities is to better understand
the social, economic, industrial, and legal aspects of e-work
& e-commerce and to develop models and scenarios that can
help shape future policy, technology development and deployment
strategies.
3.4 Other contributions to the eEurope Initiative in 2001
Beyond the above, Key Action II is contributing to the eEurope
initiative in several other specific areas:
- "Go Digital" aims at promoting the adoption of
e-work and e-business practices by SMEs through a combination
of awareness, training, benchmarking and other take-up actions;
- The European Smart Card initiative is expected to lead to
the development of standards, systems and rules to promote the
widespread interoperability of multi-application smart cards
in support of secure anytime, anywhere access to a broad range
of applications and services;
- The European Dependability Initiative addresses challenges
relating to the vulnerability of today's infrastructures and
seeks to develop solutions and promote practices that will support
greater levels of dependability;
- The e-Work initiative aims at creating more and better jobs
in Europe through the development and adoption of novel IST solutions
and practices for work suitable for all.
4. Looking Towards 2002 and the Sixth European Framework
Programme of Research
Statistics such as the ones mentioned in Section 2 suggest
that, while Europe is making headway in its transformation into
a competitive and all-inclusive knowledge society, our work is
far from being over. Adoption of novel technologies and solutions
is a long and complex process. But above all, tomorrow's knowledge-based
economy will be one driven by innovation. New technologies and
practices will continue to emerge, offering new opportunities
for greater efficiency, higher quality of work life and inclusion
of all. A key challenge for Europe is to build on its early success
in areas such as mobile telecommunication, smart cards, digital
TV and enterprise systems and create an environment that promotes
innovation. As Europe prepares for the launch of its 6th Framework
Programme of Research, it should strive to better co-ordinate
its many resources and talents. Initiatives such as GSM or UMTS
show that making an impact often requires focusing on key strategic
objectives through close co-ordination of a critical mass of
research efforts and policy activities. This observation will
likely be reflected in the organisation of the 6th Framework
Programme, which will introduce the notion of large "Integrated
Projects" that bring together a critical mass of actors
around a set of well defined objectives. Work in integrated projects
will be co-ordinated through roadmaps that will be regularly
updated to reflect the project's progress as well as other technological
and industrial developments.
In 2002, to facilitate the transition towards the 6th Framework
Programme and the creation of Integrated Projects, Key Action
II will be soliciting proposals from research communities interested
in exploring ideas for possible Integrated Projects in the area
of e-work, e-business and trust & confidence. The Key Action
will also continue to encourage bold research ideas with high
potential payoffs through its Action Line on "Exploratory
High-Risk/Long-Term Research" and will continue to fund
activities aimed at supporting eEurope priorities.
5. Conclusion
The development and broad adoption of novel IST technologies
for work and business is central to Europe's ambition of becoming
the most competitive knowledge-based economy and to create more
and better jobs. It is also now clear that the emergence of the
knowledge-based society will not happen over night and that many
key challenges still remain to be addressed, some of a technological
nature others relating more closely to adoption and policy issues.
e-business and e-work activities started by Key Action II in
the context of the 5th European Framework Programme for research
have shown that well co-ordinated European research activities
can make a difference when it comes to promoting innovation and
broad adoption of IST solutions in this area. As we prepare for
the launch of our 6th Framework Programme, we need to build on
the success of activities initiated over the past 3 years while
looking for opportunities to achieve greater impact through well
co-ordinated, larger-scale efforts that bring together a critical
mass of actors.INCORPORER |