Internet keeps fingers on EU pulse

Date: 23/10/1997

By Simon Coss

EVERY day, more than half a million people visit the European Commission. This may come as a surprise to anyone living or working in Brussels. The traffic jams seem no better or worse than they have always been. Hungry fonctionnaires can still get a seat in their favourite lunch-time haunts and it is usually possible to find a room in one of the city's numerous hotels without too much trouble.

The reason that the self-appointed capital of Europe does not now resemble an overcrowded third-world shanty town is that this daily influx of 500,000 Europhiles is made up of virtual visitors to 'Europa', the Commission's Internet website.

Europa was officially launched in February 1995 at a special meeting in Brussels of the G7 group of the world's richest nations which was dedicated to the so-called information society.

Originally, Europa only provided information on the Commission, most of it compiled by the institution's Directorate-General for information, communication and culture (DGX).

Two and a half years on, the service is now linked to all of the major EU institutions, including the European Parliament, Council of Ministers and Court of Justice. In addition, it is possible to access the websites of all EU governments via Europa as well as many administrations in non-Union states.

Lindsay Armstrong, the DGX official in charge of running the site, stresses that the half a million visitors only represents the number of people who visit the Commission's own website. “The other institutions have their own figures,” he explains.

Armstrong adds that the number of 'hits' - people recorded as visiting the service - is increasing by 20&percent; every month.

But despite the fact that Europa appears to be one of the few EU initiatives which has actually made some quantifiable steps towards achieving Commission President Jacques Santer's oft-stated goal of “bringing the Union closer to its citizens”, the service does not even have its own budget.

“Europa was developed using existing resources and personnel so we have sort of had to make do,” explains Armstrong, adding that just 300,000 ecu was allocated to Europa for the whole of 1997.

DGX is hoping that this will change in the near future, although no specific funds are likely to be earmarked for the project in the 1998 EU budget.

One of the biggest problems faced by Europa - and indeed by anyone trying to get their message across online - is that the vast majority of people still do not have access to the Internet.

Within Europe, there are significant national differences in the number of people who use online services. In the Scandinavian countries, around 7&percent; of the population has access to a computer and modem, but this falls to between 1 and 5&percent; in the Union's southern member states.

The figures are, however, rising all the time and many people who do not have their own personal connections can use machines in the office or local libraries.

On the specific question of providing data on the EU institutions, Armstrong points out that the need to offer information in up to 11 different official languages can cause headaches.

“We have encountered particular problems trying to design a 'search' service for Europa and we certainly have not come up with the magic formula yet,” he admits.

In practice, the Internet service has five major working languages - English, French, German, Italian and Spanish - with English and French still the most used.

Many critics have argued that while Europa has a vast store of information in its files, it is often very difficult to find what you are looking for.

“It is quite easy to get lost when trying to find your way around the site. Things are not always very well signposted,” said one Europa user.

Another problem stems from the fact that many Commission departments and EU institutions have evidently paid consultancy firms a great deal of money to design exotic web pages filled with elaborate pictures.

“There is nothing more annoying when you are in a hurry to get some information than having to wait for 15 minutes while a photograph of the European Commissioner for paper-clips downloads,” said one exasperated journalist.

Armstrong says he is aware of these problems and is trying to establish some basic Commission criteria for designing web pages. “We are trying to persuade Commission departments to use less images and tricks on their pages and I hope that the message is getting across,” explains Armstrong.

His task is not made any easier, however, by the infamous interdepartmental jealousy which exists within the institution. Each directorate-general wants to design its own web pages in its own way and officials do not always take kindly to, as they see it, being told what to do by DGX.

The most obvious example of a lack of coordination is the fact that the Directorate-General for telecommunications (DGXIII) has its own Internet servers which are entirely separate from Europa. DGXIII set up its facilities - entitled 'IM Europe', 'Cordis' and 'ISPO' - before Europa came online and officials there appear to take the attitude of 'we were here first so why should we change?'.

The upshot of this interdepartmental bickering is that hapless European citizens find it that much harder to get hold of the information they are looking for.

Another concern for the Commission is that the growing popularity of Europa means that the institution's existing servers will soon be unable to cope with the sheer volume of requests they receive.

European net-surfers had a foretaste of this problem over the summer following publication of the Commission's Agenda 2000 document, in which it set out its plans for EU development into the next century.

People trying to access the service found themselves caught up in an enormous electronic tailback and had to wait for up to an hour to access the documents they needed.

“Our machines in Luxembourg were simply not powerful enough to take all of the requests,” explains Armstrong.

The Commission says it is taking steps to prevent such log-jams happening again. This will be done partly by buying bigger machines. But it is also looking into ways of simplifying the often tortuous routes taken by information travelling through the world's telecoms networks to link a home computer with the Europa server.

At the moment, someone logging on to the service in France may well find the call passes through the US before being connected to neighbouring Luxembourg. This could be simplified if agreements can be reached between the various companies providing Internet connections.

The next major project for Europa will be to put around 1 million pages of EU legal texts online in 11 languages. The service will be called 'Free EU Law' and will mean that Europa as a whole will contain five times as much information as it does now.

Whether most Europeans will want to stay up until the small hours wading through the fine print of the 1972 widgets directive is debatable, but at least they will know the information is at the end of a modem should they ever need it.