Public Policy Blog

At 12h30 today, Commissioner Reding, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, will announce the main lines of the data protection reform, in order to review the regulation currently in place adopted in 1995, when the digital sitaution was far from what we know today. You can follow it live here!

On 11 January 2012, European Commission adopted the 2012 Communication on e-commerce and other online services that aim to double the retails online sales and the weight of Internet sector in European GDP. The Communication identifies 5 priorities and is accompanied by a 16 goals action plan. As I already wrote in my post on Cloud [...]

After more than one year involving hard work by many companies in the new technologies sector, companies as diverse as search engines, mobile handset manufacturers, social networks, ISPs, telecom operators, etc., the principles governing the safe use of Internet-connected devices and services by children and young people in the European Union have been published today. [...]

Last week, the Danish government presented the programme of the Danish EU Presidency ‘Europe at work’ for the next six months. The programme includes the four fundamental priorities for the Danish Presidency – a responsible Europe, a dynamic Europe, a green Europe and a safe Europe – and the Council configurations.  The Transport, Telecommunications and [...]

We have identified three priority areas that regulators and policymakers will need to pay particular attention to during these months ahead. To be effective, any policy must allow sufficient flexibility at a national level, as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach will be unlikely to succeed.

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:

On 14 December, Commissioner Kroes met a small group of industry representatives concerning Cloud Computing policy. As members of this initiative amongst others, Oracle, Google, SAP and EuroCloud presented her a set of 10 Recommendations on how to boost Cloud services in Europe.

Mid November, I attended The DigiWorld Summit 2011 where an overview of the key factors for the future Internet world was presented, focusing on the role of devices, networks, content and user behaviour. Different views on Net neutrality debate were also covered. Here is a brief overview.

With such a grandiose and sweeping event title one immediately wondered how much could be achieved in just two days (1st and 2nd of November).  The agenda that slowly seeped out in the run-up to the conference didn’t do much to inspire confidence, the themed panels seemingly covering so much ground that it made it [...]

As you know, with the Wayra initiative, Telefónica aims to promote and foster entrepreneurship in Latin America and Spain by supporting innovative business ideas. On 23rd August, the Wayra project entered a new phase of development in Colombia with the launch of a new space called the Wayra Academy. In the presence of José María [...]