Call for Contributions - International Competition on Future Internet and Interoperability

The ENSEMBLE project (http://www.ensemble-csa.eu), funded by the European Commission, aims to coordinate research activities in the domain of Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES). Furthermore, ENSEMBLE aims to study systematically and formalize Enterprise Interoperability (EI) as a scientific domain, by combining systemic approaches, scientific multi-disciplinarity and a community-driven mentality.

With this call for contributions, ENSEMBLE aims to attract high-quality innovative contributions, in the form of short papers that depict sound positions and views for either:

a. State of the art, new research fields and/or forward-looking challenges in the area of Future Internet Enterprise Systems. Each contribution should address one or more of the following questions:
• Why is research in the proposed field important in relation to enterprise environments?
• Which are the necessary research activities to be carried out in Future Internet Enterprise Systems? Which scientific gaps are they addressing?
• Taking into account the complexity of enterprise environments, which aspects are essential for the support of novel and reusable enterprise practices?
• What Future Internet enterprise applications could be envisaged by 2020, based on the research activities described? What is the anticipated benefit which may arise from the proposed research field?

b. Innovative approaches and formal methods addressing the foundation of Enterprise Interoperability science. Each contribution should address one or more of the following issues for Enterprise Interoperability:
• Foreseen basic research and foundational principles on interoperability
• Formal methods to describe interoperability problems and solutions
• State of the art in scientific methods for interoperability
• Populations of formal descriptions, generalization of approaches
• Scientific methods for interoperability in specific sectors and vertical domains
• Impact assessment, simulation methods and tools
• Proposals for academic curricula on interoperability
• Proposals on the value proposition and marketing of the scientific offerings for enterprise interoperability

Up to 5 authors of the best papers submitted under this call will be invited to join the ENSEMBLE Expert Scientific Committee. Members of this committee have a key role in providing their expertise in specific research areas, in participating in the workshops that will be conducted during the project, and in presenting their comments and feedback to the project deliverables. Beside the prestige and the opportunity to shape the EU research agenda on the Future Internet, each member of the Expert Scientific Committee will receive a sum of 2,500 EUR to fund participation in the activities of the project.

All submissions must be between 2,000 and 3,000 words, following the LNCS format. 


Important Dates:

Deadline for submission of position papers: 1st November 2010
Announcement of results and best papers: 15th November 2010

The ENSEMBLE Steering Committee
• John Psarras, National Technical University of Athens - NTUA, Greece, Project Coordinator
• Yannis Charalabidis, National Technical University of Athens - NTUA, Greece
• Ricardo Jardim-Gonçalves, Instituto de Desenvolvimento de Novas Tecnologias, UNINOVA, Portugal
• Fenareti Lampathaki, National Technical University of Athens - NTUA, Greece
• Michele Missikoff, National Research Council - Istituto Di Analisi Dei Sistemi Ed Informatica, CNR- IASI, Italy
• Keith Popplewell, Coventry University, UK
• Antonis Ramfos, INTRASOFT International S.A., Luxembourg

You may retrieve the CFC at: https://pithos.grnet.gr/pithos/rest/yannisx@aegean.gr/files/Shared/ENSEMBLE_CFC.pdf

The new Research Roadmap for Governance and Policy Modelling

More than 100 policy makers, researchers and practitioners participated in the Workshop on the new Research Roadmap for Governance and Policy Modelling, which was organised by the CROSSROAD project on 27th September 2010, in conjunction with the ICT 2010 event in Brussels, Belgium.

The aim of the session was to create feedback and reach community consensus on the research roadmap on ICT for governance and policy modelling. In the first part of the session, Dimitris Askounis from NTUA presented the CROSSROAD project, followed by a presentation by David Osimo (Tech4i2) and Yannis Charalabidis (NTUA) on the Grand Challenges for research, that are:

• Model-based collaborative governance to overcome the current fragmented and micro-level approach to policy modeling in which existing econometric models are unable to account for human behavior and unexpected events.

• Data-powered collective intelligence and action to identify tools that allow for progressive forms of citizen involvement that deal with information overload and engage all pro-active as well as more passive citizens in policy making

• Government service utility to reflect the future of digital public services that will be co-generated through the participation of administrations, enterprises and citizens, co-delivered, tailor-made and citizen-centric.

• Scientific base of ICT-enabled governance  to lay the theoretical foundations of the domain, study the relations with neighboring domains and achieve scientific rigor and further evolution with the utilisation of future ICT capabilities.

The presentation was followed by a discussion and the validation / rating of the challenges by the participants, facilitated by the CROSSROAD Consortium members (Fenareti Lampathaki and George Gionis from NTUA, Katarzyna Szkuta from Tech4i2).
The session also included presentations of next activities and future research opportunities, by:
- Antonis Ramfos, INTRASOFT International
- Yael Dubinsky, IBM Research Haifa
- Richard Wilson, IZWE.com

For more information and participation in the discussion, please visit:

The CROSSROAD WebSite at: http://www.crossroad-eu.net/
The CROSSROAD LinkedIn Group at: CROSSROAD Group in Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2594136

Greek Interoperability Centre visits IBM Research Labs in Haifa

The Greek Interoperability Centre and IBM Research examined common projects, research results and opportunities in a meeting in IBM Labs in Haifa, Israel, in September 2010.

The two organisations share common work in the areas of elctronic governance, future internet, cloud infrastructures and interopeability.

In picture, left, Yael Dubinsky (IBM Research) Yannis Charalabidis (GIC) and Gilad Saadoun (IBM Research) in Haifa Labs.

Cloud Infrastructures and Interoperability Track in MCIS 2010

The Track on Cloud Infrastructures and Interoperability was succesfully conducted on 12 September 2010, as a part of the 5th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems - MCIS 2010 in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

The track targeted novel approaches, methods, practices and tools for achieving interoperability in the provision of Digital Public Services, resulting into a significant increase of service quality for citizens and businesses, through utilizing cloud infrastructures. Specific importance was placed in multidisciplinary approaches, combining organizational, legal, semantic, technical and participative elements of interoperability, providing relative support by advanced information systems. The papers of the track were the following:

Policy Processes Support Through Interoperability With Social Media George Gionis - National Technical University of Athens, Yannis Charalabidis, Euripides Loukis - University of the Aegean,

Extracting Normative Content From Legal Texts Daniela Tiscornia and Tommaso Agnoloni - The Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of the Italian National Research Council (ITTIG-CNR)

A Distributed E-Learning Service  For Remote Areas Anna Mavroudi, Thanasis Hadzilacos - Open University of Cyprus, Demetra Egarchou - Research Academic Computer Technology Institute

Chairpersons: Yannis Charalabidis - University of the Aegean, Ralf Klischewski German University in Cairo

ICT 2010 - Networking Session: Research Roadmap on ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling

The aim of this session is to generate insight, feedback and consensus on the research roadmap on ICT for governance and policy modelling. It will explore issues such as societal modelling, simulation, visual analytics, social networking and mass collaboration. Participants can become involved in the development of the roadmap and join the validation community by discussing research related to ICT for governance and policy modelling, what research activities need to be carried out, and which aspects are essential for supporting novel governance practices. Discussions will also focus on what applications could be envisaged by 2020.

Session Agenda:

Part A: The CROSSROAD Roadmap for ICT-enabled Governance 14:00 – 14:30
- The CROSSROAD Project Dimitris Askounis (NTUA)
- Roadmap presentation David Osimo (Tech4i2), Yannis Charalabidis (NTUA)

Part B: Discussion and Deliberation 14:30 – 15:00
Discussion and rating on the Roadmap Challenges by participants, facilitated by the CROSSROAD Consortium members.

Part C: Next activities and future opportunities 15:00 – 15:30

- Antonis Ramfos, INTRASOFT International
- Yael Dubinsky, IBM Research Haifa
- Richard Wilson, IZWE.com
- Next steps, closing Yannis Charalabidis (NTUA), David Osimo (Tech4i2)

You may comment, propose issues and follow developments at:  http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/cf/ict2010/item-display.cfm?id=2844

Twitter hash-tag: #xroad

CROSSROAD Group in Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2594136

Printable version of the agenda here.