European Council of Civil Engineers
Position Paper

ECCE response regarding the European Commission initiative - "E-Europe, An Information Society For All"

From: MAXWELL_D

Sent: 01 February 2000 18:08

To: 'eeurope@cec.eu.int'

Subject: Comments on E-Europe, An Information Society For All

Importance: High

The European Council of Civil Engineers (ECCE) welcomes the European Union initiative to create An Information Society For All.

The European Council of Civil Engineers represents the majority of the professional civil engineering association in individual European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries. Its 21 members in 19 different countries together represent over 500,000 professional civil engineers. We wish to take this opportunity to comment on the Commission initiative "eEurope - An Information Society for All" and regret only that the consultation period extending over the Christmas Festivities has not enabled a more timely response.

ECCE was created in 1985 through the common belief among European civil engineers that they are better placed to advance Europe's built environment and protect its natural environment by working together. The Council works both at a pan-European and national level to advise governments and industry and to foster uniformly high professional standards throughout the region. It also collaborates with the world's other major professional civil engineering associations, particularly those of the USA and Japan.

Civil Engineers are under increasing pressure to apply new techniques and adopt new working practices in responde to the rapid advances occurring in Information and Communications Technologies. At the same time civil engineers sees both the demands of our society to improve our standard of living, and the consequences upon our environment.

ECCE is particularly concerned with matters relating to the built environment (covered in the Commission initiative by Chapter 9 'transport telematics' of the draft paper) and with elements of e-commerce which affect the civil engineering profession (Chapter 3 of the draft paper).

Within Section 3 "Accelerating e-commerce",

under the heading of Targets by the end of 2000, the paper states that "The Commission will propose changes to the Eu's public procurement legal framework to allow the use of electronic means in all public procurement procedures and transactions. Member States should actively encourage the use of electronic means for public procurement." Whilst a number of members of the European Council of Civil Engineers are strongly supportive of measures to facilitate electronic public procurement, ECCE also believes that this statement should emphasise that such measures would be accompanied by measures to ensure the security of e-commerce and public procurement.

As an example: If tendering (e.g. large Public Works contracts) is issued electronically then one may wish to ensure that encrypting has taken place so that terms of tender are not altered by unscrupulous bidders. How then, would the bidder be able to insert the response in encrypted form to respond and ensure that no tampering takes place with figures, specifications on drawings etc?

Another target states "Member States and the Commission should encourage online dispute settlement and alternative consumer redress procedures". The European Council of Civil Engineers believes that this target should be more clearly specified. Does this, for example mean simply that letters relating to disputes should be sent by e-mail or is an IT-based strategy envisaged?

A further target states that "Member States and the Commission should launch a campaign to help SMEs "go digital" by facilitating the transfer of technical know-how through traineeships and a network of centres of expertise". Our experience of consulting SMEs with regard to professional education and training is that time and travel time are key factors preventing participation, together with the obligation of maintaining profitability. It would seem advisable to encourage SMEs to make use of the internet rather than to encourage travel to centres (For example: how many centres would there be per country, would they be located only near large urban conglomerates meaning extensive travel for and resultant congestion by rural participants?).

On a further matter relating to SMEs, the European Council of Civil Engineers was actively involved in 1999 in a report for the European Commission's Industry Directorate relating to Competitiveness in the Construction Sector. This report "Information Technology as an Enabling Tool in the Construction Process" appears, I believes, on the Industry Directorate's 'Create' web-site for the construction sector. One important aspect relating to small and medium enterprises - and sub-contractors - is that of inter-operability. We believe that measures to create inclusion for Small and Medium Enterprises should include reference to inter-operability.

This relates also to the importance of ensuring that smaller firms are also able to bid for tenders or become involved in major projects despite their inability to invest heavily in information and communications technology.

A recommendation in our Comission Working Group report was that "Awareness, demonstration and best practice training intiatives towards SMEs, with tangible added value" should be carried out. Our concern would be that such training has to be targeted to what SMEs can absorb rather than diffusion through existing networks which may not be best adapted to the firms in question. To quote the co-chair of the ECCE Information Technology Task Force "Now is the time to learn, understand, and prepare for the future. There is no magic training course which suddenly gives everybody all of the new skills they might need. But there needs to be an atmosphere of encouragement and learning, looking for opportunities to understand more".

In light of the emphasis placed on integration of environmental policies into other policy areas, the European Council of Civil Engineers believes that attention should be paid to possible effects of e-commerce on transportation. Current indications are that e-commerce results in greater use of goods vehicles on roads. This can take the form of use of increasingly large goods vehicles for distribution or use of an increased number of smaller vehicles operating from more localised distribution centres. It is important not only for the construction sector, but for society as a whole that consideration is given to what freight distribution infrastructure will be needed?

Within Section 9, Intelligent Transport a list of targets are set out to be achieved by the end of 2001, by the end of 2002 and by the end of 2004. The European Council of Civil Engineers fully supports the transport targets set out and would stress the importance of the integration of electronic control in transport telematics.

One of the key aims of the European Council of Civil Engineers is to provide a source of impartial advice and as such ECCE is willing to respond to any queries you may have in relation to our response to the e- Europe paper.

On behalf of the European Council of Civil Engineers

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