This paper aims to make a contribution toward an improvement of European e-policy practice. lt is inspired by the conviction that successfuJ e-policy strategies can lead to balanced chances for all members in certain societies to aquire the absolutely indispensable capabilities for decision-making in the context of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Following the path of the development of e-policy papers it has to be stated that many goals have not yet been achieved. The techno-deterministic concepts 'access' and 'usage' seem not to reach far enough to get people really involved andinformed. Many more aspects have tobe considered in order to create a clirnate for innovation where different choices made by different individuals according to their different social, economic or cuJtural backgrounds do not lead automatically to the well known either or not, connected or not-connected, haves or have-nots, but to a variety of patterns of involvement. In this paper, we argue for different e-policy strategies according to cultural aspects in certain societies. And hereby we will focus on the cultural aspects of information itself, on the notion of information in different information cultures. lt also seems important to mention at this stage that we believe that getting all members of society involved in the ICT-innovation process in order to provide the basis for informed decisions by each individual member is the most important task of e-policy.
Andrey Makarychev, Russian Identities and the Idea of International Society 20 Years after the Fall of the USSR
