European ICT Report 2007: "Greece Sucks, Denmark Rules"

I was recently in Brussels, having some work in the European Commission. Having finished and while waiting in the lounge of the building of our meeting, I grabbed a booklet, from the shelves around, titled "European Commission's Annual ICT Report: 2007". This special branch of the EU publishes every year statistics about the performance of its members in the area of Information and Communication Technologies.

I browsed immediately to the page talking about Greece but the phrase "among the lowest" kept showing over and over again in the text! The summary was: "Information Society in Greece is still developing slowly and on most indicators Greece is close to the bottom of the EU. There are signs of increasing gaps compared to other EU countries". Damn...EU also says Greece is among the lowest in broadband take-up, use of internet, eGovernment use, number of connected PC's in schools and ICT skills among employees.. Wow! We are also among the lowest nearly in every indicator.

On the other hand, Denmark seems to be the champion. Denmark places 1st in many crucial indicators like DSL coverage, e-Learning and e-Commerce. Skill level is considered among the highest in Europe and Denmark is considered as a leader in developing the European ICT society.
You can find more statistics about the European ICT status here.

This is not news for us, however. Our strategy is void because people in charge, are void. Having skilled employees while having a Prime Minister that has never been employed anywhere, would be a contradiction.

The good news is that, since we are at the bottom, there is only one way: Going up! :)