retour
Closing
address of the "Boosting SMEs through Internet" seminar
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Jean-Jacques DUMONT
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Directeur
de l'Action Régionale et de la Petite et Moyenne Industrie
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Ladies and gentlemen,
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Allow me to apologise for Mr
Christian PIERRET, Minister of State in charge of Industry, who unavoidably
had to attend an important interministerial meeting. Mr PIERRET has asked
me to close this seminar on his behalf.
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I consider it a pleasure to address
this seminar on policies designed to develop the use of Internet and New
Information and Communication Technologies. There are three reasons for
this.
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First, the Minister of State in
charge of Industry believes
that know-how of these technologies is vitally important for the competitiveness
and growth prospects of businesses.
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Secondly, we believe that France
does not have to be ashamed of its initiatives in this area.
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Lastly and above all, meetings
like this provide an exceptional opportunity to compare experience and
so to discover ways to improve initiatives designed to help the business
community. This is the first time that a meeting on this topic is organised
under the auspices of
General Directorate 23 of the Commission, and I am pleased that France
is its host.
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I shall not talk about the stakes
of the information society, already clearly and abundantly analysed during
the presentations.
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I should first like to present
the French
action programme which, even if it would be presumptuous of me to call
it a "best practice", may nevertheless cast an interesting light.
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A. The
French programme
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The French
Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industry has launched an ambitious
action programme toward the development of New Information and Communication
Technologies.
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1. Initially, the issue was examined
in depth by a taskforce headed by Mr
Francis LORENTZ, who addressed you yesterday. In late 1997, his work
resulted in a series of "10
recommendations for the development of e-commerce". He identified four
objectives: creating confidence, having the government set an example,
fostering use of the Internet and its commercial applications by SMEs,
and building up dialogue on e-commerce between government and businesses.
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I. Creating confidence
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- After consulting operators and
experts, the government decided on far-reaching liberalisation of cryptology
regulations. Moreover, in order to stimulate the creation of safe tools,
the Ministry of Industry offered
FRF 40 m worth of R&D subsidies to successful French bidders for cryptographic
projects.
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- In 1998, significant headway
was made in promoting standard protected payment systems, including an
electronic purse for small payments. The French banking community and GIE
Cartes Bancaires, the economic interest grouping on bank cards, worked
out a unique protection solution known as Cyber-COMM.
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- The government continues to support
the launch of an electronic purse for small payments as part of European
collaboration efforts. The authorities will shortly launch an invitation
to bid for an offering compatible with the euro and creating a new European
standard.
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II. Having the government set an
example
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- Government e-commerce initiatives
have made large strides forward, including experiments with electronic
payment instruments and simplification of administrative measures. In May
1998, 70 administrative
forms were put on line. This figure is expected to nudge the one hundred
mark in the spring of 1999.
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- The move toward paperless government
procurement is well underway, even if we would have liked faster results,
which depend on the particularly complex reform of the Public
Procurement Code currently in the pipeline.
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- The government has further launched
a VAT remote declaration and remote settlement project. Moreover, in February
1999, personal income
tax returns were entirely put on line. Lastly, the authorities have
adopted an effective certification mechanism for labelling quality certificates
and certification authorities.
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III. Fostering the economic and
commercial use of Internet
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- Telecommunications quality and
costs are more than ever the key to growth of trade between businesses
or between final customers and businesses. It is essential to make rapid
progress in this area. The United States has a significant edge in terms
of network topology, a buoyant domestic market and relatively low interconnection
rates, which raises the risk of a growing gap that would hurt market share
and affect the location of commercial servers.
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IV. Building up a dialogue on e-commerce
between the government and the business community
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- The rise of e-commerce requires
recourse to highly sophisticated software and hardware. It is not certain
that the available R&D resources, notably at Community level, are up
to the challenge or sufficiently focused on key priorities to generate
the necessary momentum, especially compared with US budgets and US plans
- pushed at the highest political level - to develop a new generation Internet.
Focus of efforts on a federative "Internet of the Future" programme would
generate strong economic and competitive momentum in Europe.
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- Development of an e-commerce
offering will largely depend on the creativity of new entrepreneurs. In
1998, the authorities adopted a package of tax, financial and other measures,
which, while not specifically designed for e-commerce, should be extremely
helpful for this sector. But this is probably not enough. The US momentum
in this area is not just due to abundant venture
and start-up capital. It is maintained and built up by business
angels who provide new entrepreneurs with support. Several measures
have been suggested to encourage the emergence of this type of assistance
in Europe. Lastly, we will also have to adjust our "cultural" environment
in order to improve the reward for the risk taking, creative initiatives
and "pioneering" spirit essential for success on the Internet.
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- In March 1998, the French Minister
of State in charge of Industry submitted a memorandum on e-commerce at
Community level to the Council of Telecommunications Ministers of the European
Union. This paper calls for Community rules capable of stimulating e-commerce
and proposes positions designed to speed up definition of an EU doctrine.
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- More broadly speaking, Europe
and France have managed to make their views and priorities stick against
American initiatives. The Ministry is represented at international forums
organised to work out a new Internet framework (notably the OECD
conference on e-commerce held in October 1998 in Ottawa) and participates
in all French and Community actions aimed at laying down new policy for
the attribution of international Internet domain
names and addresses.
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- Lastly, the past year enabled
us to overcome the sometimes simplistic opposition between self-regulation
and legislation. It is now generally agreed that, while the success of
e-commerce depends on responsible market players, suppliers and consumers
and to develop self-regulation, a minimum but binding regulatory framework
is required to create the legal certainty necessary for electronic transactions
and to guarantee the fundamental rights of private citizens.
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2. Based on this situation, new
objectives have been set for 1999, notably:
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* development of effective recognition
methods for digital
signatures;
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* efforts to improve the coherence
of government remote declaration and remote settlement procedures;
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* creation of an Internet quality
observation network.
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3) As regards the business community,
the authorities have embarked on initiatives to promote and support the
use of New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) by businesses
in general and SMIs
in particular.
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a) In conjunction with regional
partners such as the Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the services of
the Ministry of Industry has launched an NICT
awareness campaign whose actions range from individual contact with businesses
to briefings and competitions designed to reward and disseminate the most
outstanding initiatives (Les
Exportateurs sur la Toile, Electrophées).
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b) All initiatives of the Ministry
of Industry in favour of SMIs have been adjusted to factor in NICTs. We
notably support the business diagnoses of private business consultants
with advice in order to help SMIs find the right NICT solution for their
needs.
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c) Collective projects are encouraged.
In 1998, the government launched a call
for proposals designed to identify and speed up implementation of collective
NICT projects. This call triggered an abundance of extremely interesting
initiatives and will therefore be repeated in 1999.
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d) Lastly, reflections are underway
to improve support for the creation of businesses based on NICT.
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B. Exchanging experience
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But none of our countries can carry
on such actions on its own.
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This is first of all because the
framework in which businesses - even SMIs - move is European
and even global. Many
measures affecting the business environment in particular are adopted at
European level. This is the direction of the initiatives taken by France
and its partners.
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But it is also necessary to exploit
the whole body of experience accumulated in and the initiatives taken by
the countries of the European Community. From a weakness in the past, Europe's
diversity seems to have become a strength.
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This is why this seminar is important.
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Granted, time was short, but if
I am not mistaken, your efforts have met the expectations of the organisers,
viz. to compare experience in order to identify best practices it would
be interesting to transpose to other countries and to propose joint solutions.
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Demand from SMEs for NICTs varies
widely from country to country. In some, NICTs have come a long way,
in others the penetration rate is lower. It will be interesting to understand
which policies were conducted where and to arrange the necessary adjustments
to the economic and cultural environment of each country.
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While it is essential to foster
demand from SMEs, it is also necessary to encourage more NICT services,
first to meet such demand and secondly to exploit the potential wealth
of this sector, which generates entirely new activities and jobs requiring
highly qualified skills.
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Another aspect of the NICTs is
that they revolutionise the concept of business and offer co-operation
possibilities between businesses that were recently impossible. In many
areas, they notably provide ways to capitalise on the strengths of SMEs
(flexibility, fast response times, etc.) and to overcome their structural
drawbacks (lack of critical mass, etc.). For example, the Web already enables
SMEs to offer products and services throughout the world at minimum cost.
It can also be used as a tool to forge close partnerships between SMEs
without affecting their independence. It is therefore important to examine
what has been done to encourage collective actions - successes as well
as failures - and to draw conclusions in order to improve public policies.
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Lastly, we need to improve efforts
to monitor the use and dissemination of NICTs. It is difficult to take
effective action if there is no way to evaluate the situation and its development.
In this area, perhaps more than in any other, European co-operation is
essential for effective results.
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The work accomplished during the
past two days therefore seems extremely important to me. The services of
the Ministry of Industry will examine its conclusions carefully, since
I believe that they offer ways to improve their efficacy and to strengthen
European co-operation. I hope that this seminar will be the start of long-term
co-operation between the European administrations responsible for NICTs
and SMEs.