Spending two days in a depressing conference room in a depressing building talking about benchmarking and measurement of e-government initiatives, made me feel like I have landed on another planet. Portal presentations on existing initiatives that have been around for some time. Someone suggesting that it might be interesting to do some webanalytics if we want to learn about the usage of these e-government services (deuh? "Google Analytics, anyone? Heard of Alexa.com?" ... what?)
Meanwhile people from the European Commission and from the contracting party Cap Gemini pretend that the opinions of European experts around the table mean something. But I got the distinct feeling it doesn't matter anyway as decisions on what needs to be done won't be taken here anyway. And lo & behold: by the end of a long discussion decisions 'will be made' as what we talked about were just 'individual opinions'.A small survey with a number of other delegates confirmed my feelings.
Lot's of running around, travelling, leaving an unacceptable eco-footprint ... I don't have a lot of "European" mileage but it frustrates me when some of the clichés seem to be true.
