1. People first in the Information Society - executive summary

1. We are living through a historic period of technological change, brought about by the development and the widening application of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This process is both different from, and faster than, anything we have seen before. It has a huge potential for wealth creation, higher standards of living and better services.

2. ICTs are already an integral part of our daily life, providing us with useful tools and services in our homes, at our workplaces, everywhere. The Information Society is not a society far away in the future, but a reality in daily life. It is adding a new dimension to society as we know it, a dimension of growing importance.The production of goods as well as services is becoming more and more knowledge based.

3. However, the speed of introduction of ICTs varies between countries, regions, sectors, industries and enterprises. The benefits, in the form of prosperity, and the costs, in the form of burden of change, are unevenly distributed between different parts of the Union and between citizens. Understandably, people are worried and demand answers to questions about the impact of ICTs. Their concerns can be summarised in two main questions:

• the first has to do with employment. Will these technologies not destroy more jobs than they create? Will people be able to adapt to the changes in the way we work?
• the second question has to do with democracy and equality. Will the complexity and the cost of the new technologies not widen the gaps between industrialised and less developed areas, between the young and the old, between those in the know and those who are not ?

4. To meet these concerns we need public policies which can help us reap the benefits of technological progress, and which can ensure equitable access to the Information Society and a fair distribution of the potential for prosperity. This Green Paper aims to stimulate the debate on the development of the European Information Society, and focuses on the key issues of the organisation of work, employment and social cohesion.

5. ICTs have led to an enormous reduction in the cost of storing and processing of information over the last 50 years. We are now witnessing a similar reduction in the cost of transmitting information. This is the beginning of the information distribution revolution. In this way ICTs are reshaping working life, the organisation of enterprises and the whole of society. Enterprises are being transformed away from hierarchical and complex organisations with simple jobs to more decentralised and network-oriented organisations with more complex jobs. The most successful enterprises are combining ICTs with education and training and with organisational transformation in an integrated approach. Fostering this approach presents a number of challenges.

• a first challenge is to build knowledge and raise awareness of the potential of the new paradigm of work organisation to deliver both productivity growth and job satisfaction.
• a second challenge is to help SMEs, the job generators in the EU, maximise the potential of this change to become more competitive.
• a third challenge is to modernise the contractual framework for working life to find ways and means to reconcile flexibility and security.

6. Europe has had steady but low employment growth for several decades. The introduction of ICTs does not seem to have changed the rate of job creation. If anything, growth has become slightly more, not less, job-intensive. The introduction of ICTs has huge effects on skill requirements and employment policy must become more focused on human resource investment. This is underlined by the already existing mismatch between skill supply and the demand for new skills - the two-speed labour market.

• what Europe needs is a substantial overhaul of education and training that can match the ICT revolution and keep pace with continuing technological development during the years to come.
• the education system must be transformed from teaching to learning. Enterprises must offer more learning by doing. The unemployed must be offered retraining instead of long term unemployment and de-skilling.

7. Strengthening economic and social cohesion remains a key objective of the Union. Progress towards convergence in income per head between Member States has been positive but slow, but disparities between regions within the same Member States have tended to widen over time. ICTs can play an important role in supporting regional and local development and promoting integration and empowerment, and the key issue is how to maximise the opportunities and minimise the risks of new ICTs for cohesion.

• a first challenge is to ensure that the liberalisation of telecommunications proceeds fully and rapidly across the Union and that the new regulatory framework supports cohesion objectives.
• a second challenge is to integrate more closely the Structural Funds and Information Society policies, so as to stimulate the access and use of modern ICTs. The process of stronger local involvement through local and regional employment pacts could be an important vehicle for a new, more employment intensive and human resource oriented cohesion policy.
• a third challenge is to ensure that the Information Society becomes a tool to create an inclusive society. The Information Society should be about people and it should be used for people and by people to unlock the power of information, not to create inequalities between the information rich and the information poor.

8. The way we develop the Information Society, the most fundamental change of our time, must reflect the ideas and values upon which the European Union is shaped. These ideas and values should be transparent in order to gain and deserve the broad support of European citizens. To this end the Commission invites all interested parties to reflect on the possibilities of formulating a set of common Community principles for the development of the European Information Society.