In 2003-2004 the Lithuanian Free Market Institute participated in an international research project “Factors and Impacts in the Information Society: a Prospective Analysis in the Acceding and Candidate Countries.” A contracting authority of this project was the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies, Seville, one of seven institutes of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission providing prospective analyses in support of the EU’s policy making-process. The project constitutes the second and final part of a research line on the „Future Outlook for the Information Society in the Acceding and Candidate Countries“ started in 2001.
The goal of the project was to make an in-depth analysis of challenges and potentialities related with EU enlargement by identifying technological, economic, political and social drivers and their impact on science and technology policy, competitiveness and employment in the wider Union over a ten-year horizon.
The project is based on the following EU decisions and documents: Lisabon agenda including „Making use of knowledge economy possibilities“(2000); eEurope+ Action plan (2001); and eEUROPE 2005 Action plan (2002), targeted at Lisbon goals and including new member states and candidate countries.
Twelve new EU member states and candidate countries took part in this project. The Lithuanian Free Market Institute carried out and presents hereby a study on factors of information society development in Lithuania. According to an uniform methodology, the study analyses a set of factors of information society development, including macroeconomics, information society policy, industrial development, the presence of economic activities most relevant to information society (such as investments to innovations, innovation policy, R&D), information society penetration rates, education, demography, cultural and sociological factors; provides a multifactorial contextual evaluation and delineates likely future scenarios for its development.
The Lithuanian study was completed in December 2003 and is based on statistics and other data that had been available before this date.
As a result of this project, 13 national monographs were prepared and are being incorporated into an integrating and prospective report about the future outlook for information society in the enlarged EU. The International Centre for Economic Growth, Budapest, is preparing the synthesis report. A series of events have and are yet to be held in the EU institutions to present the results of the project.
The study was presented to the Parliamentary Committee of the Development of the Information Society, July 5, 2004, and will be disseminated widely to policy makers and the public.
