Just a quick follow up, at Joe’s
request and before finishing my suitcase…
The two are connected, but there is
considerable internal politics involved, hence my comment that I have made
enquiries. Briefly, two different European Commission DGs, or “Directorates
General” (= department = ‘ministry’) are involved:
- the DG Information Society broadly leads
on the policy front, promoting the eEurope programme and feeding into the
Research & Development programme. Viviane Reding is the Commissioner that
heads up this DG, and made this week’s speech. The DG is very close to
the policy makers at national government level, and influence the strategic
direction of the EUs work;
- the DG Enterprise leads on all aspects
of economic activity in the EU that promotes innovation and competitiveness,
and leads on the IDA programme mentioned in the December post (IDA= Interchange
of Data between Administrations). IDA has transformed into IDABC (..Business
and Citizens) as from this year, and it funds inter-administration projects
promoting interoperability, through opportunity studies, prototypes and pilots.
That IDA is promoting an interoperability
framework is a step forward, although everyone involved recognises there is
much work to be done. I should shortly be more heavily involved in providing
policy and project support to pursue IDABC objectives.
Reding’s speech is significant as it
hints both at an important statement of policy, and may be seen as something of
an olive branch and appeal for cooperation between two DGs that have had some turf
wars over work to be done, especially in the field of eGovernment.
I hope that helps a little. Gotta dash….
Peter
From:
Chiusano Joseph [mailto:chiusano_joseph@bah.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005
11:30 PM
To: Peter F Brown; OASIS eGov list
Subject: RE: [egov] The i2010
initiative of the European Commission
Thanks Peter. Could you perhaps relate this to the following
6 December posting on this listserv:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/egov/200412/msg00004.html
"News: "IDA Releases European Interoperability
Framework for Pan-European E-Government Services"
Kind Regards,
Joseph Chiusano
Booz Allen Hamilton
Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World
From:
Peter F Brown [mailto:peter@justbrown.net]
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005
4:53 PM
To: 'OASIS eGov list'
Subject: [egov] The i2010
initiative of the European Commission
Dear all:
I thought that you might be interested in the following
extract from a speech [1] delivered this week in Prague to the Microsoft
Government Leaders Summit, by Viviane Reding, the new European Commissioner for
the “Information Society” dossier, including large chunks of their
eGov work:
“…Developments in e-government services provide
a good and practical example. Here there is a lot of activity, but also a lot
of duplication of effort. Many issues, such as identity management and
interoperability of systems, are common problems. We can tackle these issues
more efficiently together than alone. I would propose widescale demonstrators
to test and deploy pan-European services. I would also advocate the creation of
platforms and forums for clarifying priorities and for exchanging good
practice.
I’ve already made enquiries into what this might
translate to in practice, but there are some positive signals.
All the best,
Peter
[1] page 4 of http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/05/61&type=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en