Select Committee on European Scrutiny Ninth Report


8 Trans European Networks: The eTEN Programme

(26789)

11757/05

COM(05) 354

Commission Communication: "Mid-Term Review of the e-TEN programme"

Legal base
DepartmentTrade and Industry
Basis of considerationMinister's letter of 3 November 2005
Previous Committee ReportHC 34-vi (2005-06) para 8 (19 October 2005)
To be discussed in CouncilTo be determined
Committee's assessmentPolitically important
Committee's decisionNot cleared, pending evidence session with Minister

Background

8.1 According to the Commission's website, "eTEN is a European Union programme that seeks to extend the potential benefits of the single European market and the information society to all European citizens by facilitating the widest possible participation in the new knowledge economy". It aims at funding electronic services, not infrastructure. It is designed to help the deployment of telecommunication network-based services, or e-services, with a trans-European dimension. It focuses on public services in five areas — e-government, e-health, e-inclusion, e-learning and trust and security — that would help make new on-line services available across the European Union. It runs from 2003 to 2006, with a budget of €170.5m over four years.

The Commission Communication

8.2 The Commission Communication is a summary of a report carried out by independent consultants into the operation of the eTEN programme for the period from July 2000 to June 2004. It examines the way the programme has been carried out, and the impact that it has made, together with some recommendations as to how it can do things better in the future in terms of operation and in orientating the programme so that it has maximum relevance. It also includes the Commission's response to the findings and recommendations.

8.3 In his 29 September 2005 Explanatory Memorandum, the Minister of State for Industry and the Regions (Mr Alun Michael) said the programme underwent a major re-orientation in July 2002, when it was re-aligned "to become the major support mechanism for projects that were intended to take forward the Europe 2005 agenda". The Minister went on to say: "the Commission accepts the report as being a fair assessment of the programme during the period, and welcomes the report's conclusion that the programme is now well re-run and strategically relevant to Information Society policies. It also recognises the need for the programme to evolve further in order to meet the different demands in the future".

8.4 When we considered the Commission Communication on 19 October, we felt that the Minister's limited comments were in line with the rather disappointing nature of his Explanatory Memorandum, which said nothing about the wider context in which the eTEN programme is located — not only its provenance but, more importantly, its proposed future. A glance at the eTEN website showed how ambitious its aspirations are. But there was little in this Mid-Term Review that suggested that, after the best part of a decade, the eTEN programme really knew how well it had done or where it was going. Yet it seemed likely to appear, in an expanded format, in the proposed €4.2 billion Competitiveness and Innovation Programme, as part of the €800 million ICT Policy Support element. When the Committee considered the CIP on 4 July, it seemed that the Minister and we had the same misgivings about an expensive and unconvincing programme, and we urged him to approach it with appropriate rigour in the subsequent discussions — the sort of rigour that seems lacking in the consideration of eTEN.

8.5 We await further information on the outcome of the CIP discussions. In the meantime, we asked the Minister for his views on the effectiveness of the e-TEN programme in terms of delivering concrete, sought-after outcomes; if he believed that there should be an e-TEN-type programme under the CIP; and, if so, why; and we kept the document under scrutiny, while considering it relevant to the debate on "i2010 — a European Information Society for growth and employment" that took place on 8 November 2005.

8.6 The Minister has responded in his letter of 3 November 2005.

The Minister's letter

8.7 The Minister says:

    "The Committee's lack of conviction that the eTEN programme has been effective and good value for money is a view that the Government largely shares. Over the years significant amounts of money have been spent without any real evidence that a real difference has been made. However, it may be worth rehearsing the positive points about the programme.

    "First, since its re-orientation in 2002 it has supported projects in vital policy areas. It is difficult to disagree with an emphasis on issues such as promoting inclusion in an electronic environment, investigating new ways to engage with the democratic process, new digital health solutions, or looking at how the education process can benefit from the digital age. These are all areas where it is legitimate for the European Commission to investigate whether there is advantage to be gained by supporting pan European solutions. Examples might be projects such as EURODONOR, which will provide definition, specification and realisation of a European Organ Data Exchange Portal and Data Base to be used in the medical field of data organ exchange and transplantation.

    "UK Transplant is one of the project participants. Another project with strong UK participation from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is MICHAEL, where the goal is to set-up, validate and launch an online pan-European service to enable European cultural heritage to be promoted to a worldwide audience.

    "Second, it is not subject to Member State manoeuvring and influence in terms of budget allocation. The budget is distributed by means of public calls for proposals, with the number of proposals outnumbering those that are funded by around 7:1, ensuring that selection can be made from only those scoring very highly against the evaluation criteria. There is also an independent evaluation process, with independent experts selected from across the Member States, and with no participation by the Commission. UK organisations, from business, local authorities and universities, have received funding for their participation, and have taken around 8% of the available budget.

    "Finally, by the standards of some other programmes, it is relatively modest in terms of budget. However, I would certainly not underestimate expenditure of some €48 million a year, and it also points to the root of the Government's reservations about the programme.

    "While the focus of the programme is an important one, and it has supported some very interesting projects, its ambitions are seriously out of kilter with the resources it has available to deliver them. This has led to a generally uninspiring record of achievement. Up until the most recent call for proposals virtually the entire budget was spent on feasibility studies, rather than on the actual deployment of services that would make a difference to the areas identified. It is possible that some of those feasibility studies were subsequently used as the basis of deployment outside the programme itself, and if so that is to be welcomed. However, the Commission has little reliable evidence either way, and evaluation of what difference the projects supported have made has been generally lacking.

    "There must also be some serious doubt as to whether directing such a budget towards initial deployment projects will make a measurable difference, or whether such expenditure may be displacement of funds that would otherwise have been made available from other sources. There may be a legitimate role for the Commission to perform a facilitation function, so that initiatives in different Member States are made aware of complementary activities elsewhere, and perhaps offer a way in which they can co-operate. However, such a potentially useful function would not require a budget of €48 million.

    "This suggests that at present the budget is either too small to make a difference — and increasing it substantially would need to be on the basis of evidence of need that does not appear to be there — or too large for a useful programme of more modest ambition.

    "In terms of the future, it is envisaged by the Commission that this will form part of ICT support element of the proposed Competition and Innovation Programme (CIP). I think that it is inevitable that such an element in the CIP, focused on supporting i2010, will receive strong support from most Member States and the European Parliament, and in terms of promoting ICT solutions in the provision of public services this may well be valid. However, we will need to look at what is proposed very carefully.

    "Simply repeating the eTEN programme, with the lack of potential for making an impact and a difference, would be unlikely to attract much support from the Government. We would be more interested in a programme that facilitated co-operation and the sharing of best practice where activity was already taking place or planned, and it might then be legitimate for some funding to be available to facilitate a wider knowledge of such plans, broader adoption of such service across Europe, or where only European implementation would be effective. We will seek to influence thinking along those lines, and question any blind replication of eTEN in the proposed CIP without full justification.

    "I hope that this gives a helpful insight into the Government's attitude to the eTEN programme and its future, and that you will now feel able to clear the Mid-Term Evaluation Document from Scrutiny."

Conclusion

8.8 We are indeed grateful to the Minister for these insights, which might perhaps have been better offered in his original Explanatory Memorandum. From one perspective, they could be seen as refreshingly honest, in acknowledging that "over the years significant amounts of money have been spent without any real evidence that a real difference has been made". Equally, they could be seen as indicative of one of the fundamental problems of such EU expenditure — that, this diagnosis notwithstanding, it is nonetheless seen as inevitable that "such an element in the CIP, focused on supporting i2010, will receive strong support from most Member States and the European Parliament", in the face of which the Minister seems to suggest that the best that we can hope for is that sufficient of the Minister's colleagues will share his professed determination to look very carefully at what is proposed. However, as he himself says, the present programme is too well-funded for a Commission facilitation role whereas "increasing it substantially would need to be on the basis of evidence of need that does not appear to be there".

8.9 We consider this an unsatisfactory response, and shall be inviting the Minister to explain to us in person why he does not propose to oppose further expenditure in this area. In the meantime, we shall keep the document under scrutiny.


 
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