Wake up to the future

Denmark was the first country in the world to make public services available online - and is now going a step further - forcing its citizens online. Since the beginning of February, for instance, companies dealing with state institutions must submit their invoices electronically.

Around 15 million transactions that the state previously handled in paper are now managed electronically - with huge benefits.

"We have made savings in the public sector of around 100m euros (£68.5m)," says Claus Juhl, from the government's Digital Task Force. "That is a big saving in a country of only five million people. There's a lot of talk about gaining efficiency via e-solutions, but we wanted more than talk."

Despite opposition, the arguments for forcing people online are gaining ground - and not just in Denmark. The e-invoicing project was given an award for innovation by the European Union, and many other countries are watching the Danish experience closely. Extract from the BBC

In the days of mainframes, there was nothing firms could do but have their staff sat at their desk using centrally held programs.

The advent of personal computers revolutionised office work and introduced some freedom into the way firms operated - though workers largely had to sit at a desk to use the software loaded on the machine in front of them. Wi-fi everywhere takes this freedom to its ultimate endpoint.

No longer do workers have to sit at a desk to get at the programs they need to do their job. Any computer in any place will do as long as it can get access to the net. Every program they use is always available and is maintained by someone else. In this scenario, software becomes a service that people use rather than something they install. The computer is no longer important. It is all about what you are doing with it.

“We're still in a 19th Century world which sees the means of production as bolted to the floor and you had to sit in front of it," said Richard Hall, chief technology officer at hi-tech integrator Avanade.

"Wi-fi everywhere will mean staff not having to commute unless they want or need to," said Chris Boorman, vice president of marketing for Salesforce.com. "It lets staff work where they need or want to. That's going to be a huge shift in the fabric of society." Extract from the BBC

Successive governments have absorbed more than 60 billion euros in EU funds over the last 20 years, with most of the money going into infrastructure projects at the expense of more innovative investments.

A large chunk of the funds - which Greece received between 1986 to 2006 - went to transportation projects, bypassing areas such as training, education and human resources.

A number of transport projects still remain half-finished while the government has failed to implement a quality measurement system on the projects completed. Extract from Kathimerini

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