Friday's Commission Communication is well worth a quick scan: "A Strategy for ICT R&D and Innovation in Europe: Raising the Game" (press release, full text).
The document says ICT represents 12 million jobs in Europe and the ICT sector represents 6% of EU GDP, and that the sector is driving innovation and competitiveness in all sectors of the economy. This makes sense, especially in the light of page 6:
Ensuring interoperability and the emergence of standards is essential to foster innovation uptake on a large scale within the EU. The EC will pursue its effort to revise the ICT standardisation process, including through a White Paper planned for spring 2009. A priority list of actions will be established to eliminate barriers to the development of markets for ICT innovations. This list of actions will include suggestions to improve the relationship between researchers, standardisation organisations, ICT fora and ICT consortia. The EC will accelerate and reinforce, through the ICT part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP), a set of pan-European pilots to test, validate and deploy innovative ICT solutions, in particular for public sector services. The CIP will also support SMEs piloting highly innovative technologies and services, and the development of open platforms for user-driven innovation.
