Information Society News

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.

A report published today by the European Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate General sounds the alarm over the survival of Europe's film heritage. 80% of silent films are estimated to have been lost already but even new digital era films are at risk. Although the digital era provides new means of making and presenting films, it also imposes new challenges to the traditional ways of collecting and preserving films. Digital technologies are constantly evolving and what seems cutting-edge today may be as obsolete as cassette tapes or video recorders in 2020. Film heritage institutions need to keep up, take up and advance new technologies to preserve Europe's films.

The objective of the study is to provide an assessment of the socio-economic impact of very high speed internet. By "very high speed internet" we mean internet services with at least 30 Mbps download speed. The study should make reference to all technologies capable of providing such speeds now or in the future. When calculating the socio-economic impact, the study should elaborate in detail the deployment and operational costs of networks as well as the benefits to the people, the businesses and the economy as a whole. Economic as well as social factors should be evaluated. The study should develop various scenarios on the future development of internet services and quantify the impact of higher bandwidth for each scenario. The study should provide forecasts until 2020 and cover the EU27+4 (including Norway, Iceland, Croatia and Turkey).

This study shall provide an accurate analysis of the implementation by the media service providers of measures adopted by the member states in application of Article 13 on promotion of and access to European works in on-demand services, and of articles 16 and 17 on the promotion of European programmes and independent production in television broadcasting.

The broad aim of the study is to assist the Commission and ultimately countries' authorities in monitoring the progress made by enlargement countries towards compliance with the EU rules for electronic communications and information society services. The countries concerned are Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo under UNSCR 1244, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, and Iceland. These countries have been given the perspective of becoming EU members once they fulfil the necessary conditions, and are at various stages on their road towards the EU.

The 2010 edition of the Safer Internet Forum will take place in Luxembourg on the 21-22 October. This year the Safer Internet Forum will focus on the results of two major research projects funded by the Safer Internet Programme: EUKidsOnline II, which surveyed children and parents in 25 European countries about internet use, and European Online Grooming Project, the first European research project that studies the characteristics and behaviour of sexual offenders who have used the internet to groom young people. The results of research will be put in context in 3 parallel sessions on 21 October and a plenary session on 22 October.

The 8th Open Days will be held between 4 and 7 October 2010, a period during which the debate on the European Union's '2020' agenda, its policies and future budget, will be in full swing. Regions and cities will play a major role in the discussions on 'EU2020' agenda, on the budget review, and on the future of EU cohesion policy post-2013. The Open Days are an ideal framework for them to showcase good practice in the field of strengthening regional competitiveness, territorial co-operation and social and economic cohesion, to share experiences with others and to impact on the political debates among EU institutions and Member States. In 2010, the Open Days will concentrate on 'competitiveness, co-operation and cohesion'. Please note the session on "Ageing and persons with disabilities – turning the challenge into opportunities through regional innovation with ICT and accessibility measures" (session 07C26).

The Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Investment Forum aims to stimulate more innovation and investment in AAL by bringing together innovative ICT enterprises in the Ageing Well market with potential public and private investors. A key activity will be a matchmaking session where innovators can pitch their smart solutions to potential investors. The AAL Investment Forum is not just the place to raise capital, it is also an excellent place to 'reality check' a business case. Investors know what works and what doesn't. You can bounce ideas off of them, and identify the trends, risks and successful strategies in the AAL market. The Forum takes place on 14-15 September 2010 at the Odense Congress Centre. Deadline for submitting applications is 2 August 2010.