Strategic Information Policy

The application of new information and communication technologies is changing the ways in which we work, learn and enjoy ourselves. We can see the emergence of a new set of social, political, economic and cultural structures - a new information-based society.

To accelerate the development of these information based societies, countries all over the world have formulated frameworks of information policy.

These are broadly designed to maximise the advantages that can be gained through the transition to an information-based society, while minimising the undesirable consequences of such a change. At Acumen, we have monitored the development of these policy frameworks.

The United Kingdom

The UK has been fairly slow to develop the framework of policies that are required to support the development of an information society - and it has done so in a piecemeal way. An analysis that we carried out in 1998 showed that we were lagging behind many of our partners in Europe. Since then, there have been a number of positive developments. Acumen has been involved with a number of them.

During 1997-98 we worked with BMRB International to carry out the first major survey of the demand for electronic government. It was commissioned by the Central IT Unit of the Cabinet Office, now the e-Government Unit. We explored the likely demand for, and take-up of electronic government services. The results were published as The view from the queue. The report has since become a benchmark for later studies.

E-Government is closely aligned with the government's modernisation agenda. As part of this we were commissioned jointly with the Office for Public Management to review research into people's expectations and experiences of public services. The research showed that there was, in fact, a very high level of satisfaction.

Nick Moore also worked as an adviser to the Library and Information Commission - now MLA: The Council for Museums, Libraries and Archives - for the preliminary planning which led to the creation of The People's Network.

Following this contract, he undertook a similar commission for the National Museum Directors' Conference, producing a comparable report for museums - A netful of jewels.

Despite this progress, much remained to be done and in 1999, Nick Moore worked with the Library and Information Commission to develop a policy statement urging the development of a coordinated information policy for the UK.

Within a UK national information policy, it will be important to take account of regional issues and, again working with the Library and Information Commission, Nick Moore drafted a policy statement on information and regional development.

More recently, we have been involved with projects that have explored the degree to which libraries cooperate nationally and internationally and have examined the feasibility of coordinating the distributed national collection of research resources.

Europe

Within Europe, there is considerable variation in the approach towards, and the enthusiasm for, policy-driven information society development. We explored the extent of the variation in a project we undertook jointly with tfpl which tried to answer the question is the information society working in Europe?.

After analysing the very wide range of developments then taking place, we concluded that there were three groups - the leaders, consisting of the Nordic states plus the Netherlands, which were well ahead of the rest in terms of active policies and concrete results. The followers consisted of countries like Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and the UK, which, in 1998, were only just beginning to take the information society seriously. The third group - the late developers - comprised the Mediterranean fringe of the European Union. Here development was fragmented, although there were signs of significant change. Since then, much has happened, thanks largely to the efforts of the European Commission.

At the European level, we have been particularly involved with policies to support the development of the information content industry. In the early part of the 1990s, while at the Policy Studies Institute, Nick Moore led a team that provided technical support to the European Commission's Information Market Observatory. Later, Acumen was commissioned to forecast likely developments in the European information content sector in the period up to 2005. It is now possible to assess the accuracy of the forecasts made in the report

East Asia

Further afield, developments have been more dramatic. In the mid-1990s, Nick Moore worked with the British Council in East Asia, developing a regional information strategy and, at the same time, monitoring the information policy agenda. Through this work, it became quite apparent that the approach adopted by East Asian governments differed in significant respects from the European or North American approach. The contrasting policies for an information society reveal a great deal about the political philosophies and structures of the different countries.

Organisational information strategies

Individual organisations are also having to come to terms with a changing information environment. Acumen has recently worked with two national bodies to help manage the changes. We worked with Education for Change on a project for the National Maritime Museum to develop a strategy for exploiting the opportunities offered by digital networks.

In 1999-2000 we undertook a similar task for the Wellcome Trust, devising a strategy for its information services in a digital environment.