Towards an innovative, secure and sustainable information society

Innovation in and by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is a driving force for economic growth, wealth creation and fundamental changes in the social fabric of all countries. ICT is pervasive and its impact is felt significantly more than one could imagine a few decades earlier. The impacts of ICT innovation are greatly felt in many areas and ICT promises to be an agent of change in the ensuing decades. Although any selection of areas is partial, we know that technological innovations in social media, cloud computing, mobile platforms, big data, and enterprise applications are among the most significant in contemporary societies.

Key driver
ICT innovation has become a key driver of innovation in many sectors, from engineering and finance, to education and social change, for both developed and developing countries. These innovations are causing changes in the IT industry and all other industries around the globe, even threatening current practices.

Challenges
Among the challenges to innovation are: skills and competence issues (such as education); intellectual property rights including patent protection and more generally the rights of the inventor; facilitating and funding opportunities for entrepreneurs; appetite for risk; culture and environmental issues. Governments are striving to understand the institutional environment in which innovation may happen, in order to put their nations on the path of innovation. Some countries and particular areas have been able to become clusters of innovation and excellence, while others are lagging behind.

Benefits and vulnerabilities
Innovations must be embraced, encouraged and nurtured. But there are also downsides in many cases. ICT innovations can also create and pose new risks to individuals, companies and countries. For example, taking one of the greatest inventions in the field, there is no doubt that the Internet has brought major benefits by providing companies with the ability to provide services to global end users, by providing great means for collaborative communications and by providing a wide variety of accessible information of all kinds, including from governments. The Internet is making our world truly time and place independent, not only by facilitating new ways or working but also by creating new ways of social interaction.

The Internet infrastructure has also been increasingly used as a platform for critical information infrastructures—systems we have come to totally depend on—for example electricity supply systems, water supply systems and all sorts of commercial process control systems. Not only for businesss but even for our private lives we depend heavily on the "always on" availability of mobile phones, chat and e-mail. The same Internet, however, that has made it so easy for everyone to participate in the information society, offers criminals new ways to compromise such systems. Other ICT innovations may have similar risky side-effects.

Professionalism
It goes without saying that "Information technology is too important to be left to amateurs!" Seven billion people live on the earth. For an ever growing majority of them, their lives depend, directly and indirectly, on information technology. Other disciplines which are vital to our lives, such as medicine, law and accountancy, have been "professionalised" to protect the public interest by ensuring that practitioners are trustworthy, identifiable and accountable.

Shortage of e-skills
In the domain of computing, a well-known problem in modern societies is the lack of skills. All around the world companies complain about the lack of technical knowledge on engineering and computer science and how difficult it is to attract and retain talent. At the same time, companies face the reality that employees in general also lack basic skills to deal with computing services in general. For this reason it is a major issue of our time how to prepare the work force to compete in environments which demand more skills every day. Countries better prepared with e-skills take the lead in the next decades and for sure no nation would like to be left behind.

Focus
The IFIP World Computer Congress 2012 will provide a forum to debate and address these topics by representatives from the public and private sectors including government, industry and academia. After decades of development and deployment of ICT, we urgently need a more coherent, structured and harmonized approach to digital technology in a connected, truly global world. The three pillars will be uniquely linked together during the congress.

Format
The congress will be a lively and interactive happening where topics will be addressed from different perspectives, encouraging the debate on them. The format of the congress will be a mixture of different types of sessions. Participants will be involved in the discussions, not only during the congress but also during the preparation phase. It is envisaged that prior to WCC 2012 discussions will take place via the website and other means. Topics will be analysed and positions will be challenged.

Roadmap
The goal is to conclude the congress with an agenda or roadmap for the next ten years that defines for decision makers in governments, academia and industry what they need to do in order to:

• achieve a higher level of professionalism in the ICT field
• at least maintain, but possibly accelerate the pace of innovations
• more widely benefit from innovations
• reduce the risks resulting from the deployment of ICT innovations.