Thursday 26 March 2009

The role of ICT - or how to produce an irrelevant paper for the EU Council

In the most irrelevant "discussion paper" on ICT ever, the Czech EU Council Presidency - or whatever is left from it - is asking member states for the next Council meeting on 31 March 2009:
  • In what ways do you see ICT and broadband promoting growth and competitiveness, especially in order to emerge from the economic crisis? 
  • What steps are you taking to encourage the take-up of broadband in your country? 
  • What are the aims of national strategies for broadband that you have launched or that are in preparation? 
  • In what form should the European policy for information society and the media (post-i2010) incorporate the fight against the crisis and the potential of the ICT?
When you read the paper and then find these questions, you have the feeling that is written by a first year university student who is having an internship in the Council and was allowed to write three pages because the desk officer needed to drink a coffee.

If this is what our ministers have to care about during a Council meeting, then maybe they should just join the desk officer on a coffee!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Really Julian ! Are you not getting to be too harsh on what you call 'remnants of the EU presidency'?
In his last point: .....
§ In what form should the European policy for information society and the media incorporate the fight against the crisis and the potential of the ICT?......

Fight 'against crisis' is new , but 'fight against potential of ICT' is going on in Europe for quite a while,
lomg before CR got their shot at it :-)

Just from the top of my head: I recall, in 2005 city of Prague wanted to provide free WI-FI access to all, and that was shot down in Brussels, when the mobile operators asked for 'protection of their invesments' in CR. Competition is artificially limited by selling the bandwith to private companies, which then use them to generate obscene profits ... which they use to lobby for restrictions..

Julien Frisch said...

In fact, I don't attack the issue itself, I am attacking this paper with is so general and politically unambitious that I regard it as a waste of time.