The ENGAGE project: An EU eInfrastructures Initiative on Open Data

An Infrastructure for Open, Linked Governmental Data Provision towards Research Communities and Citizens

A project under the European Commission eInfrastructure programme, to begin in Summer 2011.

Information and Communication Technologies have an unprecedented potential to improve the responsiveness of governments to the needs of citizens and have long been recognized as a key strategic tool to enable reforms in the public sector. During the last years, this potential of ICT has started to be dealt with in a multi-disciplinary way, giving birth to new research communities dealing with governance and policy modelling, modelling and simulation of complex systems, public administration information systems, open governance and social media. However, this potential is to this day non-systematically exploited, as there are significant barriers that hinder the effective exploration, management and distribution of the vast amounts of available public sector data towards the research communities. 

The main goal of ENGAGE project is the deployment and use of an advanced service infrastructure, incorporating distributed and diverse public sector information resources as well as data curation, semantic annotation and visualisation tools, capable of supporting scientific collaboration and governance-related research from multi-disciplinary scientific communities, while also empowering the deployment of open governmental data towards citizens. 

The ENGAGE consortium comprises of 9 partners from Belgium, Germany, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, with an excellent track record both in the eInfrastructures and the Governance domain (NTUA, FOKUS, STFC, Uni. Aegean, TU DELFT) including world-leaders in cloud infrastructures (IBM, Microsoft and INTRASOFT International) and a large network of scientific data diffusion (EUROCris). 

Following on Open Data initiatives throughout Europe, ENGAGE has established links with numerous National and International public sector organisations, research communities, open data experts and standardisation fora. The project is supported by the Greek NREN and NGI node GRNET, providing the infrastructure for service provision.

Join the ENGAGE project group at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/ENGAGE-eInfrastructures-Project-3867416

 

The Samos Symposium on IT Entrepreneurship

The 3rd academic symposium of the University of Aegean / Information and Communication Systems Engineering Department was held in Karlovassi, Samos, on 8th & 9th  April 2011.  Attended by more than 200 participants, the symposium featured invited talks and presentations by Government and Private Sector market representatives, including:

• VELTI, MICROSOFT Innovation Centre, Greek Geeks, IMC, VTrip, TANEO Fund from the private sectors
• Ministry of Interior, Prime Ministers Office, National Technical University of Athens    

For the full programme, presentations and photos, please visit: http://samos-symposium.blogspot.com

Photo on the Left: The Opening of the Conference, in Karlovassi Town Hall

Outside the Karlovassi Townhall 

The Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) Cluster Meeting

The European Commission Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) cluster meeting was held in Brussels, on April 1, 2011. Attended by more than 30 international invited experts, the cluster meeting focused at FP7 and FP8 orientations for research on Future Internet for industries and SME's.

 The agenda of the FInES cluster meeting was as following:

Time	Topic		Presenter
09:30-10:00	Registration
10:00-10:15	Introduction, FInES Cluster State Of Play, FInES Position Paper on FP8 Orientations Dissemination	Cristina Martinez (EC)
10:15-10:30	FIA activities	Man-Sze Li (IC Focus)
10:30-10:45	What’s new from ENSEMBLE	Yannis Charalabidis (NTUA)
10:45-11:00	Introduction to SPRINT: Software Platform for Integration of Engineering and Things	Andreas Keis (EADS)
11:00-11:10	Coffee Break
11:10-12:10	FInES Task Forces Progress Report	Fenareti Lampathaki (NTUA)
	·          Standardisation	Guy Doumeingts (INTEROP VLab)
	·          FInES Research Roadmap Task Force	Michele Missikoff (CNR-IASI)
	·          FInES Research Exploitation and Impact Creation	Anton Theuma (Paragon Europe)
	·          Manufacture and Industry	Jesper Thestrup (In-Jet ApS)
12.10-12:25	FIA architecture developments	Isidro Laso (EC)
12:25-12:55	Proposal for Task Force on FInES architectural design principles	Man-Sze Li (IC Focus)
12:55-13:55	Lunch
13:55-14:10	The PARADISO 2 project: state of play (tbc)	Fabrizio Sestini (EC)
14:10-14:35	An industrial perspective of FP8 priorities: ATOS	Nuria De-Lama Sanchez (ATOS)
14:35-15:05	ActionPlanT: A Road-Mapping exercise for ICT for Future Manufacturing. ·          Introduction to the project, its concepts, progress and further activities ·          Discussions	Klaus-Dieter Platte (Platte Consult)
15:05-15:20	A research viewpoint: Smart Society and FInES	John Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (Metaloger Technologies)
15:20-15:30	Coffee Break
15:30-16:45	Contribution to FISA, new orientations towards FP8 from the Position Paper	Michele Missikoff (CNR-IASI)
	·          Knowledge Cafés on: Cloud computing, Identity Management, FInES Architecture.
16:45-17:00	Closing of the Meeting	Cristina Martinez (EC)

Diana-Ioana Vlad - Calcic (EC), Cristina Martinez (EC), Yannis Charalabidis and Fenareti Lampathaki (NTUA) at the opening of the FInES cluster meeting

More information on the FInES cluster meeting and activities is found at: http://www.fines-cluster.eu

Mobile Government Applications from University of Aegean

Within the Software Engineering lesson of the pre-graduate program of the ICS department, several Mobile Applications were developed by students. Two specific training sessions provided hands-on experience in Android and Windows 7 development platforms, provided by ATC SA and Microsoft Hellas.

The applications targeted simple mobile government functionality, through reusing open data / open services from the Greek public sector information systems. At the time of development (Nov 2010 – Feb 2011) not many open web services existed within the Greek Public Sector, thus limiting possibilities.

The applications developed for Android and Windows 7 mobile platforms are the following: 

- Automated VAT number validity check (Ministry of Finance)

- The new structure of Greek Local Administration, after the 2010 reform – “Kallikratis” programme

- The structure of Central Administration (Ministries, General Secretariats)

- A mobile tourist guide for Samos, including public administrations in the Island (in English)

- The list of electronic services provided by the Greek eGovernment gateway “Ermis” (Ministry of Interior)

- The Greek Government daily news via RSS (Presidency of the Greek Government)

- The open Government daily news (RSS from open government site “Diavgeia.gr”)

The 2011 WeGov Awards: 2nd Students Competition on Electronic Governance

The second Greek students competition  in eletcronic governance innovation "WeGov 2011 Awards" is launched.

With a submission deadline in July 2011 and the finals ceremony in November 2011, in conjunction with the Greek ICT Forum, the competition offers prizes, which include 1,000 - 2,000 EUR grants and  further collaboration opportunities with research organisations and international ICT industries, in three categories:

- Best Idea (can be at any of the 10 areas of governance addressed)
- Best Prototype (can be at any of the 10 areas of governance addressed)
- Best Application in the areas of Mobile Devices and Cloud

The WeGov Competition is an initiative of:

University of Aegean / Information Systems Lab

National Technical University of Athens / Decision Support Systems Lab & Greek Interoperability centre

University of Peiraeus / Information Security Lab

under the auspices of  the Ministry of Interior / GS of Administrative Reform

More information to be found (in Greek) at:
http://wegov.blogspot.com