Wither the Information Society?

Following the conclusion of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia, John Horvath writes that it has become apparent that the European notion of the "information society" appears to be dying a slow but sure death. From Germany's Telepolis:

The WSIS is intended to provide a unique opportunity for all key decision makers to gain a better understanding of computer and information technologies and their impact on the international community. The roles that are assumed by various "stakeholders" in smoothly coordinating the setting up of the information society around the globe is supposed to be a major concern of the summit. However, judging by the final outcome of the WSIS, it's quite obvious that any truly social aspect to the concept is clearly lacking..

In Europe, meanwhile, the apparent disconnect between information and society has been apparent ever since the mid-term evaluation of the European Commission's Lisbon Agenda. In many ways, the concept of the information society and the lofty goals of the Lisbon Agenda were intertwined. As a result, when it was publicly acknowledged that the Lisbon Agenda was, in effect, dead, information society rhetoric became more toned down. One just has to take a look at official European Commission publications as an example. At the turn of the millennium, European research and innovation publications (CORDIS info, Euroabstracts, RTD info, etc.) [1] couldn't get enough of the term; every second line seemed to mention the information society. Lately, however, this term appears less and less in pages few and far between..

According to a recent survey looking into the provision of public services online, EU member states are gradually moving more public services on to the Internet. Still, the report admits that with only 40% of these services fully transactional, there is some way to go before Europe has a high level of genuine online functionality..

Overall, Sweden and Austria are seen as the best performers, both in terms of sophistication and full service availability. Sweden has moved from having 28% of public services fully available online in 2001 to 74% by October 2004. Austria, in the same period, increased from 15% to 72%. In contrast, during those same years, Portugal went from 32% to just 40% and, in the process, dropped from being one of the top performing nations to near the bottom of the list. The countries with the lowest scores are Latvia and Poland, with Luxembourg scoring the lowest amongst the EU-15.

In some cases, moving services to the Internet can involve a comprehensive re-engineering of a public service. Malta still requires claimants for unemployment benefits to initially present themselves for an interview, but subsequent weekly claimant registration is conducted electronically at district offices using a biometric finger scan...

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