The Greek Interoperability Centre Bi-Annual Report

It may look older, but the Greek Interoperability Centre has recently celebrated its second anniversary.  Read the report the consolidates 2 years of the Greek Interoperability Centre experience, to find out more about:

- 10 international interoperability projects

- 2 national interoperability frameworks

- 2,000 governmental and private sectors services modelled

- 3,000 hours of training on interoperability

- 500,000 pages of documentation

- 2 books, 70 publications (Journals: 40%)

- 1,000,000 miles travelled

- 80 partners engaged

- A team of 20 members

- The next 2 years' figures ...

... and find yourself in one of the pictures, possibly !

The report (13MB) is available at: http://www.iocenter.eu/media/21041/d8_1-m24%20gic_activityreport.pdf

International IFIP Working Conference on Enterprise Interoperability

International IFIP Working Conference on Enterprise Interoperability (IWEI 2011)

Call for papers: IWEI 2011, Stockholm, 23-24 March 2011

“Interoperability and Future Internet for next-generation enterprises”
March 23-24, 2011, Stockholm, Sweden
Organised by IFIP Working Group 5.8 on Enterprise Interoperability in cooperation with INTEROP-VLab

One of the characteristics of our economy today is that enterprises increasingly (need to) compete and collaborate in a global market, using the internet and other technical means to overcome the traditional barrier of geographical distribution. Another characteristic is continuous and rapid change and innovation, which may be internal or external to individual enterprises, but anyway affecting the way these enterprises can perform in relation to other enterprises and their market environment. The success of an enterprise therefore more and more depends on its ability to seamlessly interoperate with other agile enterprises, and be able to adapt to actual or imminent changes, instead of making some product or providing some service in the most efficient way.

The role of the current internet for enterprise interoperability is essential but at the same time very limited in the light of its potential. The Future Internet should be much more than a universal access and communication infrastructure. It should be able to empower enterprises to innovate by creating new business value in competition and together with other enterprises, based on relevant knowledge about each other and the market. It should do so in a sustainable and socially responsible fashion, making efficient use of physical resources with a minimal environmental footprint. The current internet should evolve into a universal business support system in which enterprises enjoy interoperability services that can be invoked on the fly according to their business needs. Such interoperability services may require physical sensing capabilities as well as extensively exploiting knowledge assets.

More info at: http://www.iwei.eu/

Open Consultation on ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling - by the CROSSROAD EU Project

CROSSROAD Open Consultation on Research Gaps in ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling

In this context, the CROSSROAD project, funded by the European Commission, aims to deliver a research roadmap on ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling. Lasting the whole year of 2010, CROSSROAD will create a shared vision to support policy research and research implementation in this field. The methodology consists of four phases: state-of-the-art in the domain, scenario building, gap analysis, and roadmapping. This roadmap will be considered for the preparation of future Work Programmes of the European Commission.  All the supporive material on CROSSROAD state of the art, scenario building and gap analysis are available at: http://www.crossroad-eu.net/

Now the CROSSROAD project verifies the identified Resarch Gaps:  If you feel you have something to share, you are kindly invited to participate in the CROSSROAD online consultation on assessing research gaps for ICT for governance and policy modelling.

Please use the following link to access the online questionnaire: http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/consultation-systems/online-gap-analysis-consultation-questionnaire/

eGovernment Newsletter / Fraunhofer FOKUS / Interoperability

Download and check the International eGovernment Newsletter from FOKUS / ELAN, "... with a particular emphasis on the areas of interoperability, service-oriented architectures, identity management and process-oriented IT-governance, the Competence Center for eGovernment is a prominent partner in the establishment of eGovernment in Germany and Europe."

Prof. Dr. Radu Popescu-Zeletin, Director Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS, states: "Who isn’t familiar with the following scenario: you are sitting in your office, the deadline
is rapidly approaching, and you are anxiously awaiting the arrival of an important document. Finally, the mail arrives, you click to open the attachment – and the only thing that appears on your screen is an error message saying “unknown file format”. The hassle that results from this makes us lose faith in our digital helpers. This is a symptomatic case of an interoperability problem."

To read more, go to: http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/en/elan/news_events/international_newsletter/index.html

The Samos 2010 Summit on ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling

The "Samos Declaration" on the Future of ICT-enabled Governance

The Samos 2010 Summit was organised with great success and global visibility, on July 6 – 9, in the Research and Training Institute of East Aegean - INEAG, at Campos Vourlioton, Samos. The Samos Summit was coorganised by the University of Aegean, the National Technical University of Athens and the Greek Interoperability Centre, under the auspices of European Commission / DG Information Society and Media. 

With the participation of 100 high-level eGovernment experts from 20 countries, the meeting adopted the "Samos Declaration," which calls the United Nations, the European Union and the National Governments to support research on new ICT tools for citizens and governance in the coming years.

Samos Summit Participants, outside Karlovassi Town Hall

The Samos Declaration, concludes in four Grand Challenges for future ICT research:

- Collaborative model-based Governance
- Open Data for transparency and behavioral change
- Government Service Utilities for trans-national, collaborative public-private services
- The scientific foundation of the field of ICT-enabled Governance

W.Grommen - Microsoft, N.Kryvossidis - Google, M.Geronymaki - European Commission, Y. Charalabidis and E.Loukis - University of Aegean

The Summit hosted presentations of international research projects CROSSROAD, PADGETS, COCKPIT, OCOPOMO, + SPACES, UBIPOL and WEGOV, which are expected to produce innovative applications for citizens, public officials, politicians and businesses, in the coming years.

The Samos Summit hosted presentations of research teams and representatives from major ICT industries and research centres, including Gartner Group, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Atos Origin, Intrasoft International, Engineering, ATC, TU Delft, Brunel University, Imperial College, Fraunhofer FOKUS, CeGD, University College London, University Koblenz - Landau, IPTS, Tech4i2, Salford University, Zaragoza University, Aegean University, Greek Interoperability Centre and more.

M.Janssen - TU Delft, J.Glidden - 21c, A.Hartman - IBM, J.Pitt - Imperial College, D. Askounis - NTUA

Samos Summit publicity relied primarily on the Internet: in addition to summit participants, more than 300 scientists from around the world attended via internet broadcasting. Furthermore, thousands of members of the scientific community were informed "live" for the presentations and outcome of the meeting through Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

The event was also covered by local and national Greek media: news papers and sites Naftemporiki, Samiaka Nea, ICT Plus, ; radio stations Armonia and Ionia as well as the Samos TVchannel presented parts of the event.

Yannis Charalabidis, assistant professor in University of Aegean and Chair of the summit, said: "The Samos Summit was an important and ambitious initiative, which was a great success – giving Samos significant visibility at international level. Congratulations to participants, colleagues, students of the University of the Aegean and the National Technical University of Athens, local authorities and citizens of our island: we showed that teamwork and positive attitude can achieve a lot. And we can still become better. "

All material and presentations of the Samos 2010 Summit, photos and the "Samos Declaration" are available at: http://samos-summit.blogspot.com/


Michiel Mallotaux - Gartner Group