Putting quality before quantity

Date: 04/04/1996

There is more information bombarding us than ever before, but are we better informed? Nick Moore looks at the issues involved in building a European information society.

WE have more information available to us than ever before. We can retrieve it more quickly and we can manipulate it in more and more useful ways. Yet few of us, I suspect, actually feel better informed than we did ten years ago.

Europe is becoming increasingly dependent on information.

It is a resource that will enable us to improve the competitiveness of European industry by increasing productivity and speeding up the process of innovation and product development. It can enrich our social and cultural life, thus increasing social cohesion and reducing the potential for exclusion. Information can also enable us to participate more fully in democratic processes.

That is the positive view. A pessimist could argue equally strongly that we are facing the loss of millions of jobs, while leaving those in work feeling insecure because they cannot cope with information overload. We could be creating a society in which the well-informed will prosper, while the poorly informed will become increasingly excluded in a Europe where the global market for multimedia products has eroded the cultural identity of nations and local communities.

Last year Pádraig Flynn, the European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, set up a high-level group of experts to consider the issues facing the development of a European information society.

The Flynn group takes a generally positive view in its preliminary report, Building the European information society for us all, which was published recently.

It emphasises the need to create a learning society in which we can all use the power of the available information and communication technologies to enhance our skills, to provide greater flexibility and to enrich our social and cultural lives.

Understandably, the report focuses on employment issues. It concludes that while many jobs will be lost, many will also be created in a wide range of new information-intensive industries.

More effective use of information will lead to improved economic performance, enabling European companies to compete successfully in an increasingly global market. There will also be more variety in the way that we organise our working lives. The European information society will, the group suggests, offer the potential for greater social cohesion both within local communities and the Union as a whole, eroding the disadvantage experienced by the less-favoured regions.

But while taking a generally upbeat view, the report notes that in all areas there are dangers.

Some could arise through a failure to exploit the potential offered by the information society as quickly as our competitors do. Others are a result of the oppressive nature of technology - the feeling that we will never be able to go 'offline'.

What the Flynn group tends to overlook is the need to strengthen the mechanisms that will produce, manage and deliver information in the future European information society.

Considerable attention has already been paid to the telecommunications and information technology (IT) industries. We now need to give equal scrutiny to the information content industry.

We need to rethink the provision of information to European citizens. We need to emphasise the dynamic role that governments can play in supporting the information content industry and in ensuring that citizens are well-informed. And we need a regulatory framework that will build and maintain trust.

The European information content industry is fairly robust and is growing rapidly - a recent Commission study suggested that the industry expanded by 40&percent; between 1992 and 1994.

But it is now facing severe pressure from information providers in the United States and, increasingly, in Japan. As we lose market share in Europe, we weaken our ability to compete in the rapidly growing global market for information.

The industry needs access to a higher quality infrastructure; it needs to be able to operate in an information market that is more efficient and more transparent; it must be able to draw on an adequate supply of appropriately-skilled individuals; and it needs to be supported, rather than constrained, by the regulatory framework.

A recent study carried out for the Commission showed that information is a key element in citizenship. People cannot play their full part in society without access to information. They cannot exercise their rights and claim their entitlements, nor can they participate fully in democratic processes.

The provision of a universal public information service would go a long way towards overcoming the social exclusion that the Flynn group warns about.

But first we need to take account of the wide differences in cultural perceptions and actual provision within the Union.

Governments have a key role to play in strengthening the provision of information in Europe.

In most countries, the government collects and processes more information than any other organisation. Its policies on access to - and the dissemination of - information, therefore, have a considerable impact on the rest of the system. It can impede or promote the development of a thriving information content industry.

The government also carries the main responsibility to inform citizens about a wide range of issues and to ensure that people are well enough informed to make democratic processes valid.

Many of the issues concerned with the role of the government will be addressed in a Commission Green Paper which is due for publication later this year.

We should guard against a view that regards regulation merely as an obstacle to be overcome. Telecommunications deregulation in many countries has shown that re-regulation seems a more appropriate term.

What is needed is a new spirit of supervision which emphasises the building of trust and inclusion as the basis for the deployment of market forces. This calls for a re-examination of our policies towards regulation and a better understanding of the ways in which all the different elements depend on each other.

A number of leading researchers and policy analysts are in the process of establishing a European Information Institute to explore the issues that will determine the future shape of the European information society.

The purpose of the institute is to develop a programme of research and debate that will deepen our understanding of the interrelationships between the social, economic, regulatory and policy issues concerned with the development of an information society in Europe.

This understanding should enable us all to take full advantage of the opportunities which will arise in the coming years while, at the same time, minimising the undesirable consequences.

Professor Nick Moore is a Senior Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute in London where he has established a programme of research into the policy issues raised by the increased use of information in society.