Public Policy Blog

Many are the predictions those days in the Net concerning our sector and its perspectives for 2012, from how the telecom sector will evolve, to which services and technological trends will be the winners for next year, or how social networks will be positioned, what will be the IT “super themes” for 2012, etc…
This is a difficult and somersault exercise in a very dynamic and evolving sector such as the ICT & Telecom one. However, it is sure that some trends could be already detected.

Concerning the ICT public policy area, we could see the following issues as relevant as they are present in several international and public institutions agendas for 2012. Here are some of them:

“A patchwork quilt also keeps you warm at night” – this was in a nutshell my statement when I attended the workshop of the Council of Europe on Human Rights and Internet Governance at the IGF in Nairobi. The workshop discussed 10 principles on Internet Governance which have been adopted in September by the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe and asked the obvious questions: How will these principles relate to other Internet policy initiatives around the globe? Is there a need for common global framework – something like a global Internet Constitution?

The Sixth Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Meeting will be held in Nairobi, Kenya on 27-30 September 2011 at the United Nations Office at Nairobi. The proposed main theme of the meeting is: ‘Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation’.

Last week, The Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Commission (EC) organized a seminar-conference titled “Shared Social Responsibility: securing trust and sustainable social cohesion in a context of transition”. The event was open to public authorities, researchers, NGOs, civil society, etc. and aimed to confirm social cohesion as an objective for Europe. During the [...]