Normalerweise befassen wir uns in diesem Blog nicht besonders mit Politik. Es sei denn, sie betrifft uns als Schaffende in der IT-Branche. Erstaunlicherweise tut sich in dieser Hinsicht etwas Erfreuliches in der EU: Offenbar haben wir eine EU-Kommissarin für IT, TK und Medien, die entweder nur einen sehr guten Redenschreiber hat – was wir nicht hoffen – oder tatsächlich eine Ahnung von dem hat, was sie tut. Ganz im Ernst! Die gute Dame heisst Viviane Reding, hat zum Thema IT, IT- und TK-Infrastruktur und sogar zum Thema Urheberrecht die richtige Meinung. Vor nicht all zu langer Zeit hat sie eine Rede gehalten, deren Lektüre sich wirklich lohnt.

Sie hat den Titel „Europe’s Fast Track to Economic Recovery“ und die Ãœberholspur (Fast Track) ist dabei die IT. Ich zitiere hier nur zwei Ausschnitte, die ich besonders gut finde:

Zum Thema Urheberrecht

In the meantime, internet piracy appears to become more and more „sexy“, in particular for the digital natives already, the young generation of intense internet users between 16 and 24. This generation should become the foundation of our digital economy, of new innovation and new growth opportunities. However, Eurostat figures show that 60% of them have downloaded audiovisual content from the internet in the past months without paying. And 28% state that they would not be willing to pay.

These figures reveal the serious deficiencies of the present system. It is necessary to penalise those who are breaking the law. But are there really enough attractive and consumer-friendly legal offers on the market? Does our present legal system for Intellectual Property Rights really live up to the expectations of the internet generation? Have we considered all alternative options to repression? Have we really looked at the issue through the eyes of a 16 year old? Or only from the perspective of law professors who grew up in the Gutenberg Age? In my view, growing internet piracy is a vote of no-confidence in existing business models and legal solutions. It should be a wake-up call for policy-makers.

Zum Thema Cloud-Computing (SMEs sind übrigens KMUs auf Deutsch):

In Europe, we have 23 million small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) which make up 99% of all firms. Accounting for over 100 million jobs, SMEs can be the mainspring of Europe’s economic resurgence. But in the use of productivity-boosting ICT tools, SMEs lag substantially behind big firms: only 9% of SMEs use electronic invoices, and only 11% of them have technology-based human resource management. If SMEs could access computing power over the web, they would no longer need to buy and maintain technologies or IT applications and services. Such web based services – called „cloud computing“ – are the medicine needed for our credit squeezed economy: they can make businesses more productive by shifting from fixed costs (i.e. hiring staff or buying PCs) to variable costs (i.e. you only pay for what you use). However, today these new services are nearly all US-owned and US-based. Once again, the US has started to exploit a business model before Europe has managed to do so. We cannot let this continue. In my view, we need a major effort to set up Europe-hosted „clouds“ to give European SMEs access to fast, open and productivity enhancing services. A recent study estimated that online business services could add 0.2% to annual GDP growth, create a million new jobs and allow hundreds of thousand of new SMEs to take off in Europe over the next five years. So what are we waiting for?

Die Rede ist übrigens auch als Video auf Youtube zu sehen. Im nächsten Blog-Eintrag beschäftigen wir uns dann auch wieder mit Projektmanagement.