This document summarizes the effort of the Region of Extremadura in
Spain to reach the Society of Knowledge. In 1998, when the Regional
Strategy was launched, the Information Society was still the future.
Under the leadership of the Government (Junta de Extremadura), the
regional stakeholders decided to be The inventors of our future and to
anticipate, through concrete actions, where they would like to be when
all the potential of NICTs became real.
Nowadays, everybody knows that this potential is endless and one of
the keys to success in the new Knowledge Society is to be permanently
prepare to afford the challenge set by a world in continuous change.
But we are actors of this change and nothing is written: the roadmap
doesn't exists.
But experience does. Extremadura in 1998 has nothing in favor to
success in the Knowledge society. It was the poorest region in Spain,
on the periphery of Europe and have missed all the economic revolutions
of the XX Century. To take advantage of the possibilities of NICTs
seems now an obvious response, but at that time it was a risk in a
Region where the social demand was to be industrialized and to
concentrate all the resources on this objective.
All the projects on Education, eAdministration, eHealth and
eBusinees that the Government launched in the first years were designed
to ensure the Accessibility of All, avoiding the Digital Gap that
nowadays characterized the world we live in.
In the following pages, the reader can find the contribution of the
Extremadura Society to the GAID objectives on the bases of the Libre
/Free Knowledge: use it, adapt it to your needs and return your
experience to the Community.
Luis Millán Vázquez de Miguel
Executive President
FUNDECYT.
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