TNS Infratest and the Institute for Information Economics (IIE) on the 15th of June presented in Berlin their report “Monitoring information economy” for 2006. The experts consider the topic “IT security” to be the outstanding engine of growth for the economic sector of information and communication technology in 2006. Security hardware, software and services will be the potential for growth in the fields of “IT in companies” as well as “security in the Internet”. Internet telephony, Media Convergence and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID ⇒ Wikipedia) also provide above average possibilities for growth. Companies have a look at the future which is as optimistic as it was in 2001/2002 for the last time.
However, Michael Müller, economic senator of the General Association of German SMEs (BVMW) , according to pressetext.de cautions against too optimistic an evaluation given by the “Monitoring information economy” report. He claims that regulatory legislation in Germany was not very innovation friendly. The best conditions for entrepreneurs, according to him, are provided by Great Britain, Ireland and Switzerland. Germany was not even among the top ten. The administrative authorities were lacking client orientation. “The principle of performance orientation does not exist among state bureaucrats. All efforts point to the establishment of legal conformity which means that each citizen is entitled to an equally bad service wherever he turns to” is the ironic comment of Michael Müller on the situation of small and medium-sized entities (SMEs).
The complete report as well as several additional pieces of information are available free of charge as download from TNS Infratest. 