Prime Minister George Papandreou addressed the 11th Greek ICT Forum and presented in brief the digital plan of his new government. While the prime Minister sets the green economic growth at the center of the governmnental efforts, he places the public digital strategy on 4 supporting pillars:
- The widening of the right and the ability to access high speed networks for all the citizens and businesses in the country
- The return of all public data and information to the society via an open internet platform
- The transition to an IT empowered digital public administration and the adoption of open software for the public administration and national education
- Reverse the trend of public procurements from buying hardware and software to receiving services.
These plans attempt a substantial turn in direction of the public digital policy and are expected if/when realized to change dramatically the telecommunications and IT setting.
FIBER-TO-THE-PEOPLE: The first intervention clearly implies the widening of scope of the national FTTH plans to include a larger portion of the population under the national broadband care, something that I have blogged [1] and talked [2] about in a number of occasions in the past.
GLASNOST!: The second intervention comes to underline the gravity of IT and telecoms technology in applying transparency in public administration processes and decision making. Transparency was the cornerstone of the socialists pre-election proclamations.
OPEN SOURCE/SERVICE ECONOMY: The last two interventions which I find closely interrelated provide a unique opportunity for the development of the domestic IT/sowftware work force by 1) attempting to relieve the dependency of the state (and in the long-term the economy) from the incumbent software houses and 2) facilitating the involvement of the domestic industry in open software.
I definately look forward to see how these plans will materialize and how soon will they do.
