eTEN was supporting the deployment of trans-European e-services in the public interest. The programme aimed to accelerate the take-up of services to sustain the European social model of an inclusive, cohesive society. eTEN’s six themes included eGovernment, eHealth, eInclusion, eLearning, Services for SMEs and Trust & Security. The eTEN European Community programme finished at the end of 2006 as the funding cycles of the programme were completed. Although some projects will continue through 2009 and a few even in 2010, this is last issue of the regular quarterly eTEN newsletters (still distributed to some 2,000 recipients). While we plan to provide support for the ongoing projects funded under the programme by enhancing their visibility through this newsletter, as of next year, its publication may be less regular. At the same time we invite you to explore the other newsletters indicated at the back of this newsletter, focusing on the different themes eTEN projects have covered.
News from the Commission
eServices Europa
A
selected number of eTEN projects are receiving direct support from the
eServices Europa service contract, to provide them with the necessary
knowledge to further exploit their potential and results. The first training
course, which took place in September in Brussels, presented the
participants with various public and private funding opportunities. It also
gave an insight on how to deal with intellectual property rights, whilst
providing some useful strategies and tips for marketing and communication
activities, as well as highlighting guidelines for preparing and
implementing a business plan. The training kit of the course can be found on
the
eServices Europa website. As a next step, these selected projects had the opportunity to interact with interested parties to investigate
potential business opportunities and cooperation possibilities at the
ICT 2008 Conference in Lyon, France. For this purpose, a session
entitled “Deployment and take-up of ICT in CIP related activities”
took
place on 27 November 2008 in Lyon, addressing national and
regional authorities, investors
(venture capitalists and business angels), potential
partners and other stakeholders, who have an interest in the deployment of
eServices.
More
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Practical Guide to EU funding opportunities for Research and Innovation The Commission launched the "Practical Guide to EU funding opportunities for Research and Innovation" to help all stakeholders to find their way into the different existing EU funding. EU support for research, technological development and innovation is provided mainly through the 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7), the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) and the Structural & Cohesion Funds. If their impact is to be maximised, it is essential that these sources of funding are used in a coherent way. The Practical Guide provides user-friendly information on combining the different funding sources; it includes a description of each fund, advices for policy makers and an innovative Checklist and Scorecard, which allow potential beneficiaries to quickly identify exactly how they can access European funding at every stage of the development and implementation of a project. More |
ePractice.eu reaches 1,000 good practice cases
ePractice.eu is an interactive initiative of the European Commission that empowers its users to discuss and influence open government, policy-making and the way in which public administrations operate and deliver services. ePractice.eu currently includes over 14,500 members, 1,000 real-life cases, 19 communities, 34 country factsheets and more than 3,000 news items. |
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Information about the recently started ICT Policy Support Projects (from Call 2007) can be found here:
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eParticipation Information about projects funded under the eParticipation Preparatory Action can be found here:
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The
Project
Success Stories
About a year after the
project finished, former partners of the eTEN MEMO project are reporting on
their achievements in commercialising the services validated during the
Market Validation phase.
With the help of business angels, Cybele Production SA (MEMO project partner), will now start commercialising its cultural trip routes and semi-automatic translation services. Together with Media Welcome, another former project partner, they will propose European cities with historical heritage the creation of the Euriage platform for combining tourist data. GOLF, a variation of the MEMO project proves the concept validated and work done during the eTEN project phase. It shows the possibility to apply the same model to various themes, including cultural heritage tourism and sport activities, such as golf, horse back riding, but also spas or wine routes. Launching such a combination of services would allow European cities and regions to create a coherent tourism offer, realising economies of scale and cost rationalisation. At the same time, such combined services offered over the Internet give potential tourists the possibility to compare facilities, prices and a proposed range of services on a thematic basis. The eTEN programme was instrumental in the testing and validation of the concept, technology, management experience and a creation of a European network, reaching far beyond the consortium partners. The former project partners continue to endorse the business model and look for further investment opportunities to ensure the long-term sustainability of the service. More
News from the Project
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On 11 November 2008, Caselex has entered into an agreement with the leading legal publisher APIS in order to distribute Caselex to legal professionals in Bulgaria. Being a source of comparative case law, Caselex will represent a valuable source to inspiration and solutions that may help legal professionals in Bulgaria to efficiently and effectively deal with the knowledge requirements posed by the EU law in respect of legal compliance and litigation work. Caselex is the first premium information service providing access to the most important national and European case law linked to EU law. An easy to use online service holding exclusive case digests in English allows legal professionals to easily use foreign cases relevant to their work or study. More |
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The FASTeTEN project held its mid-term workshop in Paris on 15 October 2008, attended by eGovernment professionals from Belgium, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy and the United Kingdom. The secure infrastructure workshop was an ePractice branded event and covered the topics of electronic documents archiving, secure electronic document exchange as well as storage of electronic data. FASTeTEN is testing the French-developed FAST bundle of services for secure document exchange in different European contexts, conducting pilots in educational services in Sheffield, UK and in eProcurement in Valencia, Spain. More |
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To mark the end of the eTEN project phase of GuideStar Europe, a series of events took place in Berlin, Budapest, Dublin and London. The series were concluded at the "From Local to Global: the value of CSO (civil society organisations) information in Europe" workshop in London prior to the GuideStar International global conference, which also addressed the issue (2-3 December 2008). The workshop, which took place on 1 December 2008 provided a synthesis of the work in the different countries, presented results of the first phase and drew strategy for developing a GuideStar for all Europe. The GuideStar Europe project has assessed the feasibility of implementing GuideStar systems for four European countries as well as a pilot European portal site. More |
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Health Optimum provides services that can aid regions reach the goal of a quality healthcare and cost reduction whilst providing increased convenience to patients. These services consist of tele-counselling, virtual referral, tele-laboratory, tele-care and shared clinical records. The Region of Southern Denmark has participated in such service implementation in several different medical specialities, one of these being thrombolysis treatment. As in the other Health Optimum solutions, healthcare professionals have expressed increased satisfaction and initial results show great benefits gained by patients. It is currently being thoroughly evaluated by the Danish National Board of Health and it is anticipated to spread throughout the region, and hopefully even nation-wide. The Spanish region of Aragon has also benefited form Health Optimum's services for telemedicine. Through the project launched in Barbastro – due to its wide geographical extension, scarce population ageing at 28% and seclusion – a strategy has been put in place that shall reduce waiting lists during consultations while making them more efficient; which runs alongside a process design, training the medical professionals and evaluating the process. More |
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The InLoT project (In the Lab of Tomorrow) was presented at the European City of Science Event (14-16 November 2008), hosted at the Grand Palais, in France. The European City of Science is considered as one of the most important science events in 2008 and it was organized in the framework of the French Presidency. The title of the InLoT presentation was "L’Ecole de la physique – Exploar and InLoT: rendre visible l’invisible". The aim was to present the InLoT system, its functionalities and benefits both for students and for teachers. Furthermore, the InLoT project organised its closing workshop on 28 November 2008 in Vienna, Austria. InLoT investigated the informal science education as an opportunity to transcend from traditional classroom based teaching, to a “feel and interact” user experience, allowing for learning “anytime, anywhere”. More |
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The NavigAbile project held a symposium on "Applications of IT for people with learning and communication disabilities" on 15 September 2008 in Athens with distinguished speakers from across Europe. The workshop highlighted that communication and learning must be considered as a pleasant and entertaining activity. Greece, Spain, Sweden and Italy presented case studies, while experts spoke about their wide experience in the field of mental disabilities. More |
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A special event has been organised by the NETC@RDS for eEHIC ID eTEN project on 6-7 November in Le Mans, France. Several high level political figures attended the event; amongst them was the representative of the French EU Presidency Mr. Dominique Le Mener, Vice-President of the Conseil Général de la Sarthe, who also delivered a welcome speech as well as the EU MEP Stéphane Le Foll. The French Minister for Health, Mrs Roselyne Bachelot, gave a video-broadcasted presentation from London, while Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, addressed the event through a letter. The dedication to the achievement of NETC@RDS was further strengthened by the speech delivered by the Directeur Général of SESAM-VITALE, Mr Jacques De Varax, coordinator of the project and responsible for delivering the French health insurance eCard. NETC@RDS is deploying an online service for the electronic European Health Insurance Card (eEHIC). The current project phase will enable health care access for European citizens who provide evidence of entitlement in any of the service sites across the 15 European countries. More |
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On 9-10 October 2008 the 4th Conference on eServices in European Civil Registration, organised by the RISERid consortium, took place in Berlin, Germany. The conference brought together more than 150 stakeholders in civil registration from 22 countries. The keynote speakers included State Secretary Mr. Dr. Hans Bernhard Beus, Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology (Ministry of the Interior, Germany), Mr. Dr. Thilo Weichert, Independent Centre for Privacy Protection Schleswig-Holstein (ULD, Germany) and Mr. Antti Peltomäki, Deputy Director-General of the Directorate-General for the Information Society and Media (European Commission). Speeches and presentations on pertinent issues such as civil registration and electronic, cross-border services in this field as well as data protection can be downloaded from the project's website. The Large Scale Pilot Project STORK as well as the recently started ECRN project - both co-funded by the ICT Policy Support Programme - have also given a presentation. RISER offers a central online service that enables companies to request and verify address information throughout Europe in a simple, secure and cost-effective way. Through a central web portal, address verification can be performed from official population registers inquiring into Austria, Estonia, Ireland, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Sweden and Switzerland. More |
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The TEN4Health workshop on 9 September 2008 in Kiel, Germany, focused on concrete steps towards improving pan-European healthcare provision and on policy needs to accelerate European integration also in this field. Representatives of the European Commission and of the European Parliament have highlighted the TEN4Health project as an example for improving cross-border healthcare services in Europe. The TEN4Health project contributes towards improved healthcare provision for mobile European Union citizens. Initiated by leading public health insurance providers, the TEN4Health service package assures access of citizens to healthcare in participating Member States' hospitals, based on a secure web service and its integration into developing European eHealth infrastructure networks. The hospitals are located in areas with heavy cross-border tourism, like the town of Villach in Austria or the Veneto region in Northern Italy. More |
Past Events and Conferences
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The eChallenges e-2008 Conference took place on 22-24 October 2008, in Stockholm, Sweden. This was the eighteenth in a series of annual conferences, which regularly attracts over 650 delegates from leading commercial, government and research organisations around the world. The goal of e-2008 was to stimulate rapid take-up of Research and Technology Development (RTD) results by industry and in particular SMEs. The European Commission had a stand at the exhibition, which featured - amongst others - the PEPPOL Large Scale Pilot project on electronic procurement. A separate stand has been designated to the eTEN HealthWare project. Healthwear is validating the European market in Greece, Italy and Spain for remote health condition monitoring through wearable medical sensors. The VOICE eParticipation Preparatory Action project was also featured at an exhibition stand. VOICE aims to increase transparency and public participation in EU policy-making with the help of ICTs. A parallel session on eGovernment eServices Case Studies saw a presentation from the FASTeTEN project. More |
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The World of Health IT Conference & Exhibition took place on 4-6 November 2008 in Copenhagen. The event has been designed for and by the healthcare IT community in the European region including technology end users, vendors, providers and policy makers. Ms Viviane Reding European Commissioner for DG Information Society and Media gave a keynote on 4 November, followed by a number of sessions on 5 November, organised by the eHealth Unit of the European Commission ("The EU eHealth Agenda", "eHealth Deployment in the EU and the role of convincing evidence of benefits" as well as a panel on "eHealth matters: strategies and visions of industry leaders"). The so-called Danish Village pavilion of the exhibition featured the Health Optimum, Better Breathing and R-Bay eTEN projects. |
Other Events and Conferences
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European Ministerial e-Inclusion Conference, 30 Nov. - 2 Dec. 2008, Vienna As the "e-Inclusion: be part of it!" campaign reached its conclusion, the 2008 e-Inclusion Ministerial Conference showcased the best of e-Inclusion initiatives to shape the future European e-Inclusion agenda. The event hosted e-inclusion leaders from industry, academia and voluntary sector and addressed topics as diverse as shaping European e-Accessibility environments, investing in information technology for sustainable elderly care, digital literacy and insights into future technology perspectives. European Ministers ceme together to measure progress, refresh the Riga vision, and gain valuable insights from cutting-edge initiatives. The European Commission has founded the e-Inclusion Award to set focus on the innovative use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to help digitally and socially excluded Europeans. The winner of the e-Accessibility Award was the former eTEN project, RoboBraille. RoboBraille is an email-based service capable of translating electronic documents into either synthetic speech or contracted Braille. More |
Contacts
More on eTEN:http://ec.europa.eu/eten