I am currently preparing an essay on the EU’s “Digital Agenda” as a part of the “EU 2020” strategy that is in these days replacing the Lisbon Strategy as the main policy guideline. As to educational policy content, they don’t really seem to differ in the main “human capital” approach, although the tone of voice is getting somewhat more pressing and the internal cycles of evaluation of the member state’s progress on NRPs (National Reform Programmes) by the European Council are getting tighter, all because of a claimed urgency of the response to the crisis. No democratic process is controlling the measures the Commission and the heads of the member states (the Council, that is) are taking in Brussels, which makes a policy that is driven by fear and urgency in my view even more questionable. It will be hard to take certain reform decisions back once in place. This holds true also for the streamlining of educational systems in Europe in collaboration with employers, that is, economical interest, envisioned by the „EU 2020“ strategy.

Once finished, I will link my essay on this blog, but right now, I wanted to draw your attention to a study I encountered that does not relate directly to education, but to “E-Governance”, as it is called.

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This study was led by the Joint Research Centre at the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, which is directly linked to the European Commission. It develops possible scenarios  of how we might be governed or govern ourselves in the near future that could be brought about by the development in ICT solutions for the processing and planning of information on societies.

The gathering and digital processing of “policy intelligence” in order to achieve digitally enhanced “policy modeling” is at the heart of the matter, and the four pages that include the summary that I linked above are definitely an exciting read. As a teaser, I included the figure that maps the four scenarios identified by the researchers. In reading through the descriptions, I unfortunately must say that many “neoliberal”, human capital-oriented developments and policies to be found in Europe and elsewhere currently could be dangerously pointing towards the lower right situation, in which that poor man doesn’t seem to remember anymore how to take off those nasty-looking goggles.

The development of educational IC Technologies should take these risks into account and be aware of what approaches these can be instrumentalized for. In my view, pedagogical and technological designers of learning environments can and should play a crucial role in accompanying the rise of e-government through the development of meaningful and ethically conscious tools for political and civic education.

For more information, please follow these links:

http://www.foresight-platform.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/EFP-Brief-No.-194_Digital-Europe2030.pdf (Report Summary)

http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC61593.pdf (Complete Report)

http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/ (The Crossroads Project, of which this report was one part)