Spain and the Information Society: Plans or Policies?

This article starts with a fact: Internet penetration levels in Spain are extremely low compared with other European countries. In the nineties this situation was justified by the relative delay in the adoption of public and private initiatives, oriented towards the development of the Information Society (IS). However, data in 2003 show that the gap still holds or even tends to increase with the rest of the evaluated areas. Spain is 14 points below the European mean in households with Internet connection (30% vs. 44%), which is similar to the gap that exists in the percentage of on-line buyers (9% vs. 24%, compared to the total Internet users), or with general users (44% vs. 54%). Nevertheless, a first overview of the public initiative shows that in recent years there were a plethora of actions to promote the incorporation of the new technologies of Information and Communications (ICTs). In Spain there were many plans and actions, and oriented towards all sectors. They started with the first initiatives oriented towards the administrative modernization. Then moved onto more than three hundred initiatives in the first strategic plan of development of the IS 1. Then it came finally another strategic