Speed on the Agenda – again!
Jinfo Blog

25th May 2010

By Anne Jordan

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Last week the European Commission published its Digital Agenda for Europe, claiming that implementing the plan would contribute significantly to the EU's economic growth. Indeed Neelie Kroes, the EU’s Digital Agenda Commissioner, described it as key to economic recovery. She said "The aging lady Europe can't afford to hold back" on the actions laid out in the agenda, as it was behind the US in technology, and risked being overtaken by emerging markets. Ms Kroes made her comments at the World Congress on Information Technology, as reported in PCWorld (http://digbig.com/5bbqpg). She sees the Digital Agenda for Europe as a comprehensive action plan that will improve competitiveness and underpin growth, as half of European productivity growth over the past 15 years has been driven by information and communications technologies and this trend is likely to accelerate (http://digbig.com/5bbqpj). The Digital Agenda outlines seven priority areas for action: creating a digital Single Market, greater interoperability, boosting internet trust and security, much faster internet access, more investment in research and development, enhancing digital literacy skills and inclusion, and applying information and communications technologies to address challenges facing society like climate change and the ageing population. In these seven areas, the Digital Agenda foresees some 100 follow-up actions, of which 31 would be legislative. The full text of the report can be read at http://digbig.com/5bbqph. There are several points of interest to information professionals. The report calls for a better coordinated European response to cyber-attacks; one of the Commission’s action points is to simplify copyright clearance, management and cross-border licensing; and of course there is the expected commentary on the need to ensure increased broadband speeds. The 2020 target is internet speeds of 30 Mbps or above for all European citizens, with half European households subscribing to connections of 100Mbps or higher. Today only 1% of Europeans have a fast fibre-based internet connection, compared to 12% of Japanese and 15% of South Koreans. However, it remains to be seen how the Commission will achieve this as it has not announced any new funding to build the networks, only saying that it would "explore how to attract investment in broadband through credit enhancement mechanisms and will give guidance on how to encourage investments in fibre-based networks”.

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