Work Nouveau

In July 1994 in Naples the G7 leaders emphasized on the necessity of encouraging the development of a world-wide Information Society. To my mind this was quite an astonishing bit of vision from an organisation that normally  produces a lot of fog but not much clarity, although one has to admit the reduction in 3rd world debt program was quite effective. (Notice quite – not very, or extremely just quite, but so much better than ineffective).

The G7 members and European Commission used the  the Ministerial Conference held in Brussels on 25-26 February 1995 to select 11 international pilot projects to demonstrate the potential of the Information Society and stimulate its development internationally.

Don’t forget this was before Amazon first opened on-line (July 16, 1995) and there were significant doubts at that time as to whether the Internet could support robust eCommerce activity. I remember that even at  Telecom Inter@active ’97 in Geneva, a presentation from an eCommerce proponent admitted that he could not see how anyone would consider buying a high value item like a Mercedes through the Internet.

The idea was to involve countries beyond the G7, and a wide variety of organisations and projects.

The key objectives of these Pilot Projects were to:

• support international consensus on common principles governing the need of access to networks and applications and their interoperability,
• establish the groundwork for productive forms of co-operation amongst the G-7 partners in order to create a critical mass to address this global issue,
• create an opportunity for information exchange leading towards the further development of the Information Society,
• identify and select projects of an exemplary nature having tangible and clearly understandable social, economic and cultural benefits which would demonstrate to the public the potential of the Information Society,
• identify obstacles related to the implementation of practical applications serving the creation of a global Information Society,
• help to create markets for new products and services, where appropriate.

The projects chosen were to adhere to the following criteria and should

• add value for the development of the information society,
• be relevant to citizens,
• stimulate cooperation,
• bring in other countries and encourage open access.
• avoid creating new bureaucracies or institutions
• and finally they should only be financed by existing programmes. (Which meant no cash from the G7).

The G7 Ministers identified 11 pilot project areas at the Brussels meeting:

1. Global Inventory project (led by the European Commission and Japan)
2. Global Interoperability for Broadband Networks (Canada and Japan)
3. Cross-Cultural Training and Education (France and Germany)
4. Electronic Libraries / Bibliotheca Universalis (France and Japan)
5. Multimedia Access to Word Cultural Heritage /Electronic museums (Italy and France)
6. Environment and Natural Resources Management (USA)
7. Global Emergency Management (Canada)
8. Global Healthcare Applications (European Commission)
9. Government On-line (UK)
10. Global Marketplace for SMEs (European Commission, Japan, USA)
11. Maritime Information Systems (European Commission, Canada)

Admittedly some of these projects did not make much of an impact, but others such as the Global Marketplace for SMEs did contribute in raising the visibility of eCommerce and the required infrastructures. In fact the project continued in various guises until 2003 when the Deeds project finished. Interestingly one of the conclusions of that project was that Knowledge Management was the next major hurdle to be surmounted by small businesses.

So after that lengthy introduction I cut to the point. Those G7 (later G8)  pilot projects successfully acted as catalysts for various aspects of the Information Society that today we take for granted. I’m sure a valid argument could be made to say these developments would have happened anyway, however these projects did provide focus and, as a true catalyst should, facilitated and speeded up the process.

I firmly believe that we need another global initiative that will help focus the attention of administrations and the other key actors on stimulating the knowledge economy rather than just throwing billions of Dollars/Euros/Pounds on short term initiatives that might alleviate some short term pain, but that will do little to promote much needed long term change.

An early initiative from the new and enlightened President of the U.S.A. would be favourite.

Why not make suggestions for 10-15 projects of a global nature that would contribute to the ongoing development of the Knowledge Society.