Summary of François Fillon's speech of 15/10/96 on the Information Highway Observatory

This observatory has been set up as part of France's effort to participate fully in the information society. The observatory will include representatives from all organisations involved in the information technology domain.

Rather than initiate a vast program the Government felt a series of trials proposed by interested parties would bring greater success. This policy is to encourage trials on new infrastructures and services to better appreciate the needs of users, and involves a budget of over 500 million francs for research and development.

This initiative has already proved to be a success with 635 projects proposed by a wide variety of public and private corporations. 244 of these have been retained and are underway throughout France.

Over 500 proposals concerned innovation in the services and content sector rather than new infrastructures. The sectors represented include the media, database access, education, electronic trade, health, research, tourism and modernisation of government services. Proposals including high-speed platforms were under represented except those from France Telecom, or projects to open private networks to the public, or cable networks to telecommunications services.

The observatory will follow up on the trials and report its findings. Faced with a market and technologies where success is uncertain the observatory will act as a guiding light for future initiatives.

The observatory will provide an overview of the trials underway using external expertise and provide early evaluation in the first quarter of 1997 with a more substantial report by the end of 1997.

© Secretary of State for industry - France