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

Microsoft, Oracle and GIC initiate the Greek Interoperability Council, in Athens

The "Interoperability Day" co-organised by the Greek Interoperability Centre, 9th June 2010

The Greek Interoperability Centre (GIC), Microsoft Innovation Centre and Oracle Hellas organised the "Interoperability Day for the Private and Public Sector", on Future Internet Digital Services, in order to promote international interoperability standards in the Greek Public and Private Sector, towards new digital public services.

<- On the left: J.Psarras, T,Tzakri, Y. Charalabidis and W. Grommen in GIC Day opening


During the day, representatives of public administration, IT industry and research centres discussed about strategy, actions and impact of Future Internet services for governments and businesses.  Keynore speeches, after introduction by Prof. John Psarras, NTUA were as following:

Theodora Tzakri (pictured, right) Vice Minister of the Greek Ministry Interior, responsible for Electronic Governance, talked on the new framework for eGovernance and Interoperability in Greece, announcing more than 10 specific actions and initatitives on fiber infrastructures, base registries, service delivery channels, interoperability standards, open government in local administration and the overall target of having all major G2C services in level-5 (pro-active and personalised)

Yannis Charalabidis, Manager of the Greek Interoperability Centre and Ass. Prof. in the University of Aegean in Samos, spoke on world-class examples for policy making, service transformation, open governance and interoperability science, with a note to the "interoperabilty ROI" within crisis. Microsoft Interoperability Council, FhG FOKUS Germany-Online plan and eID, the ENSEMBLE project on interoperability science base were among the highlights.

This first session also included:

- Wilfried Grommen (pictured, left), Regional Technology Officer, Central and Eastern Europe, Microsoft, delivering a talk on cloud infrastructure and open standards for governments.

- Theodore Karounos, Consultant to the Greek Prime Minister, on the Greek OpenGov.gr initiative and interoperability outlook.

- Yota Paparidou, Greek ICT Industry Association, on the enterprise interoperability needs of SME's  

- Ingo Prestel (pictured right, bottom), Senior Manager Public Sector - EMEA, ORACLE, described the multi-fold interoperability offering of Oracle, relying on open standards, common infrastructures and Fusion middleware.

In the second part of the day, Dimitris Askounis, Ass.Prof NTUA and researchers from the Greek Interoperability Centre, together with collaborating organisations and companies, showcased innovative scenarios for automated government, seamless security and identity management, semantic interoperability and coordinated process management.

Within the panel discussion, journalist Yannis Rizopoulos dicussed "the next day in interoperability" with a pool of experts from the Greek Market:

- Panos Theodosopoulos, Public Sector Director, Microsoft Hellas
- George Bourmas, DB & Options Sales Consulting Manager, Oracle
- Nikos Karamolegos, National Bank of Greece
- Yannis Papidis, IT Applications Operations Director, OTE

The establishment of the Greek Interoperability Council was announced, aiming at coordinating interoperability-related efforts. Establishing members include representatives from Aegean University, NTUA-DSSL, AUEB-ELTRUN, Microsoft, Oracle, Singular Logic, ATC, Greek Geeks, HSE and Piraeus Bank.

See all the presentations and announcements at:

http://www.iocenter.eu/news--events/events/iopday.aspx

In the Executive Interoperability Council, at Microsoft Redmond

The Microsoft Executive Interoperability Council annual meeting was held in Microsoft Headquarters in Redmont, Seattle.    More than 20 CEO's and CIO's together with top researchers and academics joined Microsoft leading executives in two days of presentations and discussions around interoperability issues.
The agenda included the "hottest"  interoperability challenges and solutions in cloud, social media, enterprise systems and services for the connected and mobile world.

In the picture below, Yannis Charalabidis among the invited experts in the EIC, which from Europe also included representatives of Fraunhofer FOKUS (Germany) and NCC (UK).