Jörg Tauss, Member of the German Bundestag Education and research policy spokesman for the SPD Parliamentary Group

European Association of Information Services conference

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for your invitation to the European Association of Information Services conference in Baden-Baden. The subjects that you are discussing here involve questions about the future that also concern us as education and research policy-makers in this country.

What is the role of state in these matters? How can the private sector help us? In which areas of the market are private commercial offerings adequate?

Allow me first to explain in more detail the importance of information and communication in a global knowledge and information society.

It is hard to imagine today's information- and knowledge-based society without powerful, future-oriented information and communication. In order to maintain the competitiveness of the economy, ensure scientific, political and administrative efficiency and allow the long-term education of an enlightened public in a democratic community, we urgently need to overcome the stagnation that has dogged information policy in Germany since the mid-1990s. The primary goal of a responsible information policy should be to give members of society and social institutions the power to act autonomously with regard to information, i.e. to ensure that they have access to relevant information sources under conditions that are reasonable and fair, and enable them to evaluate and use information products.

(1) Information markets are not just commercial marketplaces. They are also forums for the public exchange of knowledge.

(2) The ability to extract knowledge from data and information and use it as intellectual capital is a major success factor in all areas. Information should no longer be used just as a means to promote growth, but should also be regarded as a prerequisite for global competitiveness.

(3) In the information and knowledge society, the information economy plays a key role.

(4) It must be given incentives and guidelines for drawing up a responsible and fair product and pricing policy.

(5) As a key domain in the market economy, the information economy is also very much in need of state regulation and involvement.

(6) Science must be guaranteed free access to public and commercial information market resources. Free does not necessarily mean access at no cost, but rather unhindered access to information and unlimited communication at efficient and fair prices.

(7) New forms of direct publication and distribution, for example, must therefore be developed.

(8) The rationality and efficiency of political and administrative actions must be improved by increased use of information. Public information must also be made more readily available to the general public.

(9) Information policy must take into account the fact that new, more direct forms of public education which complement traditional media are now possible and needed.

(10) Information policy must accept the general cultural mandate of safeguarding access to today's knowledge for future generations.

(11) The information society cannot develop without sufficient information skills at all levels of education and training and in all areas of further education. This also includes the further education of teachers and training personnel.

(12) Information policy must strive for a high degree of transparency in view of its relevance to all other areas.

(13) To enable it to act on an international scale and provide effective policy advice, the Federal Republic urgently needs a new institution dealing with information infrastructures. This institution must be transparent, efficient and networked with all relevant areas of information.

The ways in which knowledge and information can be organised must be continually renewed in the light of the technology and methods available and must be politically safeguarded. It will increasingly be left to the electronic information markets and their services - as shaped by information and communication technologies - to do the job previously undertaken by encyclopaedias, libraries and archives. Responsible societies should not leave the task of organising knowledge exclusively to the free market. Too much depends on it for all areas of society.

Since 1974, the Federal Republic of Germany has shown remarkable tenacity in continuing to promote and coordinate the information sector. Nonetheless, there has been an unmistakable tendency for some areas - including the information sector - to atrophy over the last few years and reforms have dried up. This is a situation that urgently needs to be remedied. Since around 1996, Germany has fallen behind countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia and Finland, to name but a few. Causes of this include:

• Insufficient assimilation of concepts proposed by the scientific community and, consequently, a slow rate of innovation as regards products and forms of organisation.
• Limited success of promotional initiatives such as Info2000 and Global info.
• Germany's insufficient representation on important international bodies such as the WorldWideWeb Consortium (W3C).
• Insufficient integration of the various organisations in the fields of information economy and information science.
• Failure to establish a comprehensive concept for basic and advanced education and training (to foster information skills).

The Federal Government has therefore called for a new approach to information policy. Extensive discussions are currently taking place on this matter. The Federal Ministry for Education and Research has commissioned a report to be concluded at the end of the year which will recommend concrete measures and action.

Information policy ? because of its significance for society as a whole ? must be based on a broad social consensus. It must be possible to formulate the following cornerstones of an information policy and to then embed these in relevant measures using programmes that will play a key role in guiding and accelerating the (further) development of a future-oriented information and communication policy:

1. Need for state involvement: There is an urgent need for state involvement and structuring. The hitherto almost dogmatic attitude of relying on the privatisation of important information sectors must be reassessed without casting doubt on the legitimacy and effectiveness of a free information market. Information markets are not just commercial marketplaces. They are also forums for the public exchange of knowledge. The creation and expansion of information and communication infrastructures has the same importance that traditional infrastructures such as traffic and energy supply have had for a long time. The primary goal of a responsible information and communication policy (including specialist information policies) should be to give the members and institutions of society the power to act autonomously with regard to information, i.e. to ensure that they have access to relevant sources of information under conditions that are reasonable and fair, and to enable them to evaluate and use information products. Other goals, each related to different areas of society or the economy, all follow on from this general one.
2. Economy: From an economic point of view, the availability of knowledge is one of the major success factors in the information society. Not without good reason has the process of evaluating the intellectual capital of organisations and companies become a standard means of assessing their value - even on the stock exchange. It is becoming harder and harder to derive this capital from the organisation itself, and it is more usual to obtain the information from the relevant global information markets. The expertise which organisations possess is based not least on using the available information and communication structures for their own purposes on technical, methodical and content levels. All measures geared towards the increased cooperation of knowledge producers and knowledge users must be supported, as must measures for providing access to resources. From an economic point of view, information should no longer be regarded just as a means of promoting growth, but also as an indispensable basis for ensuring the global competitiveness of the German economy and therefore also as a basis for the enrichment of society as a whole.
3. Information economy: The information economy, i.e. the area of the national economy that deals with the production, processing and distribution of information products and services, is the driving force of the economy in the information society. Its significance comes mainly from its contribution to the other sectors of the national economy such as the agricultural, industrial and services sectors and the public administration and political sectors.
4. The information society, whose achievements are based largely on the processing of knowledge generated by public money, must be given new incentives to help it draw up a fair and competitive pricing policy.
5. Need for regulation: Even in the market economy, there is a considerable need for the state regulation of the information economy - a key area of the economy as a whole ? and for the creation of incentives through, for example:

• specifying political goals such as free and fair access to information and providing the means for everyone to build information skills,
• developing legal, standardised framework conditions such as new, fair taxation models or "fair use" in copyright law,
• promoting plans for developing innovative products,
• promoting effective information marketing,
• creating new types of networked organisation.

6. Science: Science and education have also been affected by the advancing economisation of knowledge and information. Just as culturally aware nations have always safeguarded their knowledge in libraries, so it is important today that scientists - in the light of the ever greater use of information and communication technologies and multimedia ? are ensured free access to knowledge resources and to products and services on the public and private/commercial information markets.
7. Distribution and dissemination of knowledge: New ways must be found which will enable science to work with present-day distributors of knowledge (publishers, agencies, libraries, bookshops) and in collaboration with specialist societies and international scientific communities, to develop new processes for direct publication, communication and distribution on a large scale, without suffering any loss of quality vis-à-vis existing information and communication methods. Science cannot be expected to buy back its own products from the business sector at some time in the future. Information markets are increasingly becoming end-user and end-seller markets in combination with new forms of personnel and technical intermediaries.
8. Politics and administration: Emphasis must be placed on the importance of information for the political and administrative sectors, so that it can be used to improve the rationality and efficiency of political and administrative actions. Administrative efforts to develop processes which are more efficient and more people- and business-focussed within the framework of the new control models currently favoured depend heavily on an efficient information management system with access to relevant information. In order to ensure greater symmetry of information flow, this information management system must go hand in hand with an administrative system that is itself willing to make administrative information more extensively and easily available to the general public.
9. The public: The question of access to information resources is also a key issue for communication policy (see point 1) with respect to both the user and the provider. The role of information for educating an enlightened public in a democratic community must be redefined and expanded, both in combination with present-day mass communication media and by considering new, direct ways for members of the public to play a part in public events.
10. Cultural mandate: Although the economic and political function of information is of primary importance, it should not under any circumstances be forgotten that every generation has a duty to process and preserve for future generations the knowledge it has so far acquired. It is for this reason that UNESCO is currently setting up a "Memory of the World" programme worldwide, following successful programmes for conserving the world's natural and cultural heritage. The state should not - even partially - be allowed to relinquish its responsibility for safeguarding resources through overly rapid privatisation, as is currently being dramatically demonstrated with large chemical knowledge bases such as Gmelin and Beilstein. Safeguarding information and archiving knowledge for present and future use in ways perhaps as yet unforeseen is one of our key cultural mandates.
11. Information and media skills: A new information policy must acknowledge the fundamental responsibility of states for matters of basic and further education and must give increased support to the development of information and media skills at all levels of education and training and in all areas of public and private further education and training. This also includes providing both the corresponding technical infrastructure, teaching and learning materials and the further education of training personnel, teachers and university lecturers themselves. The goal of information skills involves more than just acquiring an IT qualification, it also involves learning how to evaluate and filter vast quantities of information from a whole variety of sources around the world. The reliability of this information is not always known. Reproducible quality assurance processes must therefore be developed.
12. Transparency: Information concerns all areas of society. A new information policy must therefore focus more sharply on transparency and on the involvement of all participating groups than has hitherto been the case. The Federal Ministry for Education and Research should continue to play a coordinating and motivating role in this. Among the general public, specialist societies, the media, organisations in the information economy, the many social groups and popular movements, new forms must be developed which will help increase awareness at an international level of the importance of information and of the responsibility to structure the information sector, e.g. to break down the barriers between those countries with a surplus of information and those with a lack of it.
13. Information institutions: The efficiency of information is shaped by its infrastructure and the information institutions/centres set up over the last 25 years or so. Their role has been questioned over recent years primarily by calls for greater rationalisation and privatisation in the information policy domain which have scarcely been reasoned to any great extent. The transformation planned for the institutions of the information sector must be carried out very carefully and not before a transparent, public and thorough debate has taken place and a consensus been reached.

You see: Lots of very interesting Questions. Enjoy this conference. We are waiting for your answers. Thank you very much.