Information Society News

Neelie Kroes, EU Commissioner for the Digital Agenda will be opening the Digital Agenda Summit organised jointly by ETNO, the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association and the Financial Times. This event will bring together the Chief Executive Officers of the leading e-communications providers and ICT equipment manufacturers from Europe and beyond for a high-level dialogue with EU policy makers on the key challenges ahead in order to fully unlock the potential of the ICT sector for the economy and society and meet the targets of the Digital Agenda for Europe.

This workshop aims to encourage the sharing of good practice in the area of Inclusive eGovernment. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: eGovernment policies targeted at groups at risk of exclusion; User segmentation in eGovernment services; Inclusive eGovernment in healthcare; Multichannel delivery services; eGovernment services: the ‘value chain’ dimension; Design, production, delivery, access and use of inclusive eGovernment services; “Inclusive by design” versus specific assistance - tailored services; Marketing, targeting and promotion of eGovernment services for specific disadvantaged groups.

The AAL Forum is the yearly conference of the Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme, which aims to invest around €700 million in products and services between now and 2013. It provides a platform for all stakeholders – investors, researchers, policy makers, industry providers and end-users – to discuss smart solutions for improved quality of life in later years. Ambient Assisted Living Technology is a relatively new and vibrant field of investment, research and development. Policy makers are already exploring options and planning on future technology investments in this area. Several regional and national initiatives are emerging around Europe to support public and private investment. In support of this, the 2010 AAL Forum will now launch and host the first ever European ‘AAL Investment Forum’. The objective of the one-day Investment Forum is to improve communication between investors and researchers and introduce investors to projects which require immediate and/or long term funding. World leading entrepreneur, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil will be one of the keynote speakers at this event.

This workshop aims to encourage good practice sharing in the area of Digital competences of intermediaries and social actors working in the field of economic, social and/or digital inclusion of groups at risk of exclusion such as the elderly, disabled, migrants, youth, unemployed and low educated people.

The 2011 WoHIT Conference and Exhibition will be held in Budapest, Hungary, in conjunction with the annual eHealth High Level Ministerial Conference – eHealth2011 – which is co-organised by the European Commission and the Hungarian Presidency of the EU. WoHIT has launched its call for papers on European IT development. Focus will be on proposals that are addressing the educational needs of professionals in various sectors of healthcare, enterprise solutions and practical approaches to healthcare IT issues. Three different themes in the area of eHealth and health IT have been named: eHealth Works: Here Is the Evidence; eHealth Market; eHealth Users’ Platform.

WORKPAD, an EU-funded ICT research project, has developed software applications that allow emergency teams responding to natural disasters to coordinate and communicate with each other quickly and efficiently, helping to save more lives. Coordination and communication is especially important when emergency teams from many different agencies, civil authorities and NGOs are on the ground at the same time. €1.85 million of EU funding helped the researchers to explore how dozens of databases from different organisations can be linked via peer-to-peer technology to improve response time and avoid duplication of efforts. One central dispatch point that receives and sends out information to all emergency teams can help save more lives in a quick and efficient way. The technology has already been tried successfully in Southern Italy and is available to be used anywhere in the world.

Today, the European Commission published calls for proposals that will result in projects worth €1.2 billion to be launched in 2011.

The EU is investing in the future of the Internet to ensure it will be able to support increasing demands from citizens, businesses and governments. The European Commission today made available €90 million under the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership.

On 16 September the European Commission and empirica, in cooperation with the Belgian Presidency of the EU, will present the final results of the eHealth Strategies study to a wider public. Commissioned by the EC in 2008, the eHealth Strategies study has surveyed the status-quo and assessed the progress made by EU Member States and EEA countries towards realising European eHealth Action Plan goals. The workshop will summarise key outcomes and feature presentations by representatives of national eHealth programmes on lessons learned from eHealth strategic planning and implementation. After a networking lunch and the presentation of good practice cases, policy recommendations for further eHealth diffusion will be discussed. The workshop is free of charge, but by invitation only.

Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn announces today nearly € 6.4 billion of European Commission investment in research and innovation. The package, the biggest ever, will advance scientific boundaries, increase European competitiveness and help solve societal challenges such as climate change, energy and food security, health and an ageing population. Around 16,000 participants from research organisations, universities and industry, including about 3,000 SMEs, will receive funding. The package is an economic stimulus expected to create more than 165.000 jobs. Grants will be awarded through "calls for proposals" (invitations to bid). Many calls will be formally published on 20th July. There is a €1.2 billion boost to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) research, which will help deliver the Commission's commitment in the Digital Agenda for Europe to maintain the pace of yearly increases in ICT funding.

Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn's opening remarks

The objective of the e-inclusion benchlearning study is to review and analyse practices in relation to public policy actions, undertaken by public administrations, agencies or other actors making use of ICT to support and empower vulnerable socio-demographic groups.

Thanks to a research project that has received €2.6 million of EU funding, Europeans face less disruption when travelling by train this summer. The ARRIVAL project has developed advanced software that schedules trains more efficiently and handles disruptions, as they happen in real time, more effectively while maintaining the same level of safety. The results of this research are already being applied by railway operators across Europe to ensure more efficient use of rail networks, in terms of both timetabling and dealing with unforeseen disruptions. The algorithms developed have potential applications in other areas such as road traffic navigation systems, industrial work-flow systems, e-commerce, peer to peer networks, grid computing networks and healthcare.

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary celebration of Intel Braunschweig, ERIC 2010 Germany, will take place in the city of Braunschweig. The theme for the conference is to ‘Accelerate and amplify the European research ecosystem to enable a strong innovation based economy and a more sustainable society’. The conference will include a number of high-profile keynote speakers drawn from across industry and academia and will focus on the following topical areas: Many Core / Parallel Programming; Embedded Computing / Automotive; Visual Computing – The Future Internet; and Digital Europe / Open Innovation. Registration deadline: 12 September 2010.

Telecom Conference of the SME Union. Brussels, 14 July 2010.

Hardly anybody would have forecast 10 years ago that the business world would look as it does today. We use no typewriters any more and most information is available and exchanged electronically. How will the industrial world look in 10 years time? Which products and technologies will we use to produce goods, to do business, to learn, to live and to communicate? To better explore the potential that these technologies can offer, European Commission Vice-Presidents Antonio Tajani, Neelie Kroes and Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn have launched the high-level expert group on key enabling technologies. Key enabling technologies, such as nanotechnology, micro- and nanoelectronics including semiconductors, advanced materials, biotechnology and photonics are of exceptional importance for shaping the industrial future of the EU. The work of this group will eventually contribute to a European strategy for the industrial deployment of such technologies.

The IT industry is building the future Web platform at W3C. HTML5, CSS, SVG, and other open global standards for Web technology are starting to be deployed in browsers, and the Web community is enthusiastic about a host of new features such as location-based services. W3C has begun to organize a series of workshops to bring the television industry and other producers of consumer electronics into the discussion. Participants will have the opportunity to share their own perspectives, requirements, and ideas to ensure that emerging global standards meet their needs. The first workshop in the series takes place in Japan and emphasizes participation (in multiple languages) by companies from Japan, Korea, China, and other countries in Asia (though anybody may attend). The second workshop, in Europe, is likely to take place during the first quarter of 2011.

85 networking sessions will take place at ICT 2010. You are now able to add your comments to the different sessions and start to plan your agenda for the event. Selected networking sessions will provide you with a forum to exchange ideas and expertise on all scientific and technological subjects directly related to ICT, including FP7, the ICT PSP programme (CIP), and many more. The sessions on the following topics might be of particular interest: Companion robotics, BNCI research, Living Labs and smart ICTs for well-being, an open service platform for interoperable AAL applications.

In addition to the strategy and the press release, more documents are now available in all the EU languages, in particular the factsheets "Key initiatives" and "Digital Agenda: what would it do for me?" on the impact on various social groups.

Save €€€! Register up to July 15th for ICT 2010 at special low rates!

The subject of the contract is a study that will analyse and explore the relationships between the emerging ICT landscape and the development and provision of assistive technologies and e-accessibility, within a perspective of 10 years.