MEPs scan the messages of the information society

Date: 09/01/1997

By Rory Watson

AS THE information technology revolution continues to gather pace, MEPs are pressing to ensure that the potential cultural and educational benefits are not ignored in favour of more hard-headed commercial considerations.

The lead is being taken by British Socialist member Eluned Morgan, the author of a 35-point resolution likely to be presented to the European Parliament for its approval later this month.

“One of the interesting things about all the work being done on the information society is that so much of it is focused on the infrastructure. People are losing sight of what would go on this, so we must concentrate more on the content involved,” she explains.

Acutely aware that education and culture are two areas where member states and not the Union hold sway, the British MEP, with the full support of the Parliament's cultural affairs committee, has concentrated on EU-supported action which would not cut across national sensitivities.

“We need to fix bench-marks so people have something to aim for and know what other member states are doing,” she says.

Among such targets, Morgan will suggest that governments agree goals to be met by the year 2000 on providing new technologies in public educational and cultural establishments.

Several of the tasks involved would fall on the European Commission, which is also facing calls to encourage networked “twinning” between schools and to carry out a comprehensive comparative study of the extent to which educational authorities in the Union use new information technologies.

The draft resolution also suggests that the Commission should publish a Green Paper on the role of libraries in the emerging information society. The initiative is designed to spark off a debate on issues such as copyright, public access to electronic information, public lending rights and the training of librarians.

Morgan readily admits that financing is one of the key issues to be faced in ensuring that the educational and cultural possibilities of technological developments are exploited to the full.

“More work needs to be done on who should pay the costs involved. We are trying to look at best practice. For instance, some companies supply schools with computers and then use the premises to run their training courses,” she explains.

The MEP would like to see private companies and the public sector cooperating in sponsoring educational software and is urging that ways of adapting entertainment-based interactive multimedia software to educational needs be examined.

Other suggestions being canvassed would encourage the creation of networks which would allow schools and colleges to forge contracts with service suppliers who would provide the necessary connection facilities, lease the hardware and software, and supply training in a single package.