The Eiffel Tower gets a
facelift
Raphelle LUCAS, France
The Eiffel Tower, whose shadow fall
across the Champs de Mars and which has become a famous symbol for Paris, is being given a
facelift. This iron structure, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1889, is being
repainted for the 18th time. This acrobatic job started in December 2001 and will be
completed in 2003.
Some twenty-five acrobat printers, wearing
harnesses and holding on to a girder with one hand and widening a long paint-brush in the
other, are involved in an astonishing task: they are prettying up the Eiffel Tower. Below
them, tens of meters of space… and a breath taking view of the Seine and of the
streets, buildings, parks and monuments of the French capital. It is the eighteenth time
that the Great Lady is being repainted since the Tower was built in 1889. In February
2003, she will be wearing her new garments, after fifteen months of work and without ever
being closed to visitors.
Besides restoring its irron Gothic lace, in
the words of the French painter Paul Gauguin, this painting operation, costing 3 million
euros, also aims to protect the masterpiece from the ravages of time. Its creator, the
engineer Gustave Eiffel, had himself indicted the need for this in a text, The 300 metre
Tower, in 1990. He wrote, One will never sufficiently assimilate the principle that
painting is the essential element for preserving metalwork and that the care taken therein
is the only guarantee that it will last. Rust, urban pollution and bird droppings all
contribute to daily damage making cleaning and special care necessary.
Its builder assures us that from the moment
it was built, each part of the Eiffel Tower was made perfectly accessible so that visits
could be carried out in all weather to spot the beginning of any rust and to remedy it.
The workers recruited to cover the 200,000 square meters of surface that need to been
maintained, with some 60 tones of paint must clearly not suffer from vertigo. To ensure
the safety of these specialists of work on high girders and pylons, some fifty kilometers
of lifelines have been installed. These lines were placed by high-mountain guides and they
enable the painters to move around while always being attached to some point.
After striping the rusty areas, accounting
for about 5% of the structure, the workers from the SPR company, in charge of the work,
give the Tower two coats of anti-rust paint. They also use high-pressure steam to clean
the areas considered to be in good condition before applying a final coat of paint. The
methods used are those from Gustave Eiffel's time: everything is done by hand. There is no
brushing from a distance or painting with a spray gun. The workers have all their tools
tied to their belts and wrists, including their pots of paint.
For this eighteenth painting operation, the
Societe Nouvelle d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SNTE), which runs this property
belonging to the City of Paris, has chosen a paint formula which does not contain any lead
pigments. These have been replaced by \zinc phosphate which fights corrosion and is less
harmful for the environment. The binder in the final coat of paint has been strengthened
with a resin which is particularly resistant to air pollution. These modifications were
introduced after a series of preliminary tests. In preparation for the 2002 painting
session, the SNTE explains, numerous tests were carried out over several years in
test-tubes and on the monument itself. Some of the test tubes were exposed to the weather
from the top to the bottom of the Eiffel Tower while others underwent laboratory tests.
All kinds of paint aging processes were thus regularly studied.
As the part of the Tower between the first
floor and the top is more exposed to air pollution, the SNTE has decided to treat it every
five years and to do the bottom part only every ten years. Until now, the Eiffel Tower had
been repainted every seven years. The color will be the same. The three different shades
of Eiffel Tower brown (from the darkest at the bottom to the lightest at the top) which
has been used since 1968, will continue to enhance the slim outline of the elegant
construction which, in the past, had been painted Venetian red, then reddish-brown, ochre
brown and even in shades of yellow. Its slender figure will continue to enthrall the six
million visitors or so, who, every year, pay homage to the Beauty and to inspire all kinds
of poets as it did in the past with Cocteau, Belle girafe en dentelle, Rendez-vous de
pigeons voyageurs inconnus… (Beautiful lace giraffe and meeting place for unknown
homing pigeons) and Charles Trenet who sang y'a d'la joie, la Tour Eiffel part en
balade…. (There is joy. The Eiffel Tower is going off for a walk.)
Modern State--Modern
Administration
--Michael Hinrichs, Germany
On a civic level, what kind of information is
of particular interest to you? Ran the question posed by the Germany's ministry of
Interior last year in its Internet discussion forum as the draft for a new law on the
freedom of information was being debated. It did not take long for someone to reply that
they were interested in the salary members of parliament and cabinet ministers earn, which
immediately sparked off a lively discussion. Others, meanwhile, debated the fundamental
issue as to whether the new law was compatible with the protection of personal data.
"We received a great many substantial proposals", confirmed Briggite Zypries, a
senior civil servant in the Federal ministry of the Interior in charge of coordinating the
program "modern state-modern administration" which launched the government's
campaign to renew government, administration and governmental institutions in December
1999.
Public administration is also making
increasing use of the Internet to gauge general feeling and public opinion on diverse
issues so as to incorporate them in decision making processes at the political and
administrative level. And government agencies are turning more and more to Web in order to
satisfy public demand for up-to-date information. "Only those who are well informed
are in a position to make sound judgements. Information is the basic requirement for all
citizens who participate and get involved in shaping the political governing process as
people wish", said Otto Schily, Germany's Interior minister.
The advent of the Internet has provided a
medium capable of substantially promoting dialogue with the people and their involvement
in society's development. As such, the Internet is crucial to the government's program,
launched in 1999, for a speedy modernization of government and administration which goes
far beyond increased civic participation and a more transparent bureaucracy. Over the last
three years, government departments and institutions have undergone substantial
modernization, emphasized by the fact that the public have access to draft legislation at
a stage when, previously, such access would have been barred. In these days of globalized
economies, where politics and society are more closely networked together, public
administration is faced with new tasks. For example, public administration targets to
streamline costs while introducing more efficient working methods have emerged in the form
of business administration guideline elements such as the so-called cost-and-performance
calculations. In late 1998 there were still only 25 government agencies who had introduced
controlling concepts compared with 215 today. Cost-and-performance calculations now affect
89% of total government personnel compared with 8.5% in 1998. Over the last few years 92
out of a former 654 government agencies have been abolished. At the same time, over 100
government agencies are being re-organized. "Modernization is an irreversible process
nowadays", says minister Schily.
In this respect, "gender
mainstreaming" has an important role as a guiding principle and political strategy,
designed to take into consideration the diverse living situations and interests of both
sexes when it comes to planning and making decisions in politics, thus providing an
important basis for eliminating specifically gender-related discriminatory practices with
regard to men and women in all fields of politics. Equal treatment of men and women will
be encouraged as a universal principle in all political, standards-related and
administrative measures adopted by the federal ministries. Around 30 trial projects have
been set up in various ministries. "In this way we are trying to develop methods and
techniques to enable us to detect indirect cases of discrimination", says Briggite.
Cooperation between government and business also has high priority. One of the most
important public/private partnerships is the program entitled "D21-the dawn of a new
information age". Together with the government, more than 300 companies are
supporting the spread of information and communication technology in Germany. Around 1,700
employees of member companies and promotion firms linked with the campaign, the so-called
D21 ambassadors hold informative talks in schools about job opportunities in information
technology. Thanks to this program, all German schools have now Internet access.
Increasingly widespread Internet use is a
fundamental requirement when modernizing government and administration. The Internet is
the medium of modernization because it makes the provision of time—the money-saving
virtual services possible as well as encouraging dialogue with and among the people in
addition to opening up new opportunities for direct participation. Never before was it
possible to provide so many people with such swift and comprehensive information. The fact
that around 70% of Germans expect in future to be able to deal online with state
bureaucracy shows how necessary and right it was for the government to launch their
comprehensive e-government program in September 2000.
Government online 2005 refers to the project
in which the government has undertaken to put all 376 potentially online servieces out of
a total of 383 government services onto the Internet. For example: in Germany,
school-chilefen and students are entitled to a government loan (BafoG) under certain
conditions which has to be paid back at a later date – when students have
complemented their studies, for instance. The Federal Administrative Court is responsible
for ensuring that government loans – which currently amount to 5.8 billion euros
– are eventually paid back. Through the "BafoG online" project loan
repayments can now be processed electronically, which saves around 4.5 million euros a
year.
Another example: in Germany, around 70,000
companies are obliged to pass on regular information to the Federal Statistics Office
regarding goods traffic within the EU. Until now, this involved transferring around seven
million data files on paper or via magnetic data transmitters. Since early 2000, companies
can transfer their data at the click of a button to the Federal Statistics Office by means
of the "s3stat" program and over 10,000 companies are already doing so.
Whether filing an income tax return or
applying for a student loan – countless bureaucratic procedures can now be completed
via the Internet. Both sides benefit from this, as the following calculation shows: in the
year 2000 business people in Germany applied for a trading 788,000 times, cancelled them
705,000 times and re-registered them 186,000 times. If we calculate about 60 minutes per
applicant for a return journey plus waiting time and filling out forms, then the figure
involved is 240,000 working days per year.
The federal e-government project will cost
around 1.65 billion euros. However, considerable savings will offset the financial
investment, since the government expects savings totaling 400 million euros a year once
the project is fully under way.
By means of its Website services portal, the
government has already provided central access to the website of over 1,300 institutions
and government departments. Well over 2,000 website are already linked up and every week
there are more. "The government online 2005' program has set itself ambitious
targets", says Brigitte., "but we are right on schedule". However, there
are setbacks: for instance, when IT systems at government, regional and local level differ
and data winds up in digital no-man's land, because hardware and software are incompatible
and no innovative initiative can come up with an answer. "We need a common
denominator", says Brigitte citing the recently started SAGA project. Common
"standards and architecture for e-government applications" will ensure that
different infrastructures are linked together.
And that is necessary in order to match
business expectations as Brigitte Zypries, a senior civil servant, points out. "We
can't expect business people to equip themselves with the latest technology, then reach
for the carbon paper when dealing with government departments," she says. "That
is why the e-government program is important for boosting Germany's business location
status."
This became evident in May 2001, when new
signature legislation came into force. It is now possible, in many cases, to sign an
application or a contract online which then becomes legally binding. This has important
implications for the electronic allocation of contracts by the federal administration
since, after all, 30,000 public institutions allocate contracts worth around 250 billion
euros each year. There is enormous potential here for lower costs and greater efficiency
– both at the administrative level and in the private sector.
Online elections and e-democracy
This is not solely concerned with
"government online 2005." Implicit in e-government is "a link with
e-democracy" as Hans Martin Bury, cabinet minister and adviser to the Federal
Chancellor, puts it. The federal government makes use of the Internet in order to present
legislation online, enable regular chats with politicians and administration experts, set
up discussion forums and ensure there is greater transparency, dialogue and participation.
The public can make proposals to the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs on how to
dismantle bureaucratic hurdles for companies while the Federal Ministry for Family
Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth encourages children and young people to get
involved in social politics. The federal government is examining the possibility of
holding online elections in Germany and the Ministry of the Interior is inviting the
public to voice their opinion on draft legislation regarding the freedom of information.
More than 400 suggestions were sent in with some proposal incorporated during drafting:
except for the suggestion that, in future, the general public could "argue and
decide" the salary of every single Member of Parliament. |
