European digital agendas: Wallonia in Belgium

Economic growth is the magic concept to survive and to rebound from the economic crisis. The Europe 2020 strategy (EU2020) and its seven flagship initiatives are intended to bring us smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

The Digital Agenda for Europe is the information society or ICT strategy, which bundles 101 actions under eight pillars (themes), but they cannot be achieved by the EU Commission alone. The member states are involved in setting policy guidelines, legislation and follow-up. Many actions depend on what the member states achieve domestically.

Thus, we face the question if there are national digital agendas in line with the Digital Agenda for Europe.

Yesterday we glimpsed at Belgium and found the Flanders in Action Pact 2020 (ViA), but I did not yet stumble across a specific digital agenda.


Wallonia

Now we turn to the French-speaking region of Wallonia, where we find the broad initiative Creative Wallonia: Introduction, Trois axes and Documents. The two main documents are the framework programme and the preparatory study:

Programme-cadre Creative Wallonia (undated; 72 pages)

Le rapport de la commission Zénobe (downloadable here; 2009; 111 pages)

The substance covers wide areas of the EU2020 strategy.


Wallonia's ICT strategy

Within this context, more specifically ICT oriented is:

Master Plan TIC (dowloadable here; 16 June 2011; 92 pages)

You can find aa Executive Summary in French, as well as in Dutch, German and English: Executive Summary – ICT Master Plan (downloadable here; 6 pages)

After presenting main ICT trends, the summary offers a roadmap with ten strategic priorities and six major issues briefly outlined.

Finally, there is the Baromètre TIC 2011 – L'usage de technologies de l'Information et de la Communication en Wallonie, with hard facts about ICT usage in the reagion, as well as recommendations by the Agence Wallonne des Télécommunications (AWT) for the future (26 pages).

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If you have updated information about a Flemish digital agenda, or about the central government of Belgium, I am grateful for information. You can comment on this blog post or send me an email. Updates about other national (regional) ICT strategies in the European Union and the European Economic Area are also welcome.



Ralf Grahn
speaker on EU digital policy and law

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