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Updated:
03/05/2004
Dear colleagues,
As co-ordinator of the STILE project I am proud to announce the closing
STILE conference 'Measuring the Information Society'.
With funding from the European Commission's Information Society
Technology (IST) Programme in collaboration with Eurostat, the STILE project
was set up to provide innovative methodologies and content for the statistical
monitoring of the European labour market in the eEconomy.
The 'Information Society' is a complex set of technical, economic
and social changes that have affected many advanced economies and is now
disseminated across the globe, influencing developing countries and also
so-called first world countries in the core of their evolution. Over the
last decade there has been a fundamental shift in gear in the deployment
of the Information Society. The supply of Information and Communication
Technologies is in the process of transforming whole industries, creates
a new globally traded economy and is fuelling ever faster technological
innovation. It is obvious that the use of ICT's now cuts across all sectors,
industries, and boundaries and supplies the essential underpinning of
the Information Society. In this new environment, occupations and businesses,
production and work processes, and the labour market in general are undergoing
fundamental changes as well.
How can we assess these changes in work? How can these trends be measured
and benchmarked in a European perspective - recognising that the
economy today and increasingly in the future crosses all boundaries? Are
the available indicators and instruments still adequate to monitoring
these fundamental shifts? It seems that this is not a matter of lack of
data or information, nor of the absence of a 'statistical system'.
Rather, the available instruments and data are not capable anymore of
grasping the multi-facetted dimensions of the shift towards an Information
Society, nor can they keep pace with the fast evolutions. The statistical
system has not adapted to the reality of the Information Society of today
and tomorrow. Further, the value of statistics in guiding policies that
accommodate to new trends is not always fully recognised. An adequate
statistical monitoring of the labour market, that allows monitoring who
is working where and under what conditions, as well as how working patterns
evolve across national boundaries, is however of strategic importance.
It serves the efficient functioning of the labour markets: the potential
employees who need to know where the jobs are and what skills are needed,
the employers who need to identify and recruit trained workers, the educators
who contribute to the workforce deployment, the policymakers who rely
on information to foster the implementation of an inclusive Information
Society. This is all the more true in a unified and enlarged Europe, where
diversity still seems to be the standard and policy requires more than
ever a common understanding.
This conference is about how we can better measure the impact of the Information
Society on work, organisations, individuals and institutions and how the
labour market monitoring systems are challenged to keep pace with this
(r)evolution. This event is not only intended to present the main findings
of the STILE work. It also wants to stimulate cross-border co-operation
between users, such as policymakers, academics and people from the statistical
world. The programme will combine strategic keynote presentations, contributions
about the STILE output, contributions focusing on theories - concepts
- content, and contributions focusing on policy or methods. The main findings
of the project will be included in a concluding book that will be available
after the conference.
We hope that the conference will be of interest for you and that your
participation in the conference will contribute to its success.
We are looking forward to meeting you in Brussels.
Best regards,
Monique Ramioul
STILE project co-ordinator