Effective interaction between public administrations, citizens and businesses is essential to build the digital society. Online delivery of basic services to citizens and businesses (for instance personal documents, income taxes, company registration or VAT) help public authorities provide better services. Today, many public services are available online but this is not always the case across borders. Key in the strategy to improve such interaction is the development of Large Scale Pilot projects (LSPs) engaging stakeholders such as public authorities, service providers and research centres across the EU in the implementation of common solutions to deliver online public services and make them accessible throughout Europe. Five LSPs work on this: E-CODEX, EPSOS, STORK 2.0, PEPPOL and SPOCS... Discover them!

The project aims to make data and platforms available for digital public services on cloud computing infrastructures. This means that open data can be used as a starting point to create new applications and services for public administrations, companies and citizens or to provide a channel for feeding back information to public administrations.(February 2012 - September 2014)

Thanks to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)it will be possible in the future to provide all citizens, regardless of their location, with better and personalised healthcare, achieving at the same time relevant cost savings for patients and the society at large. Citizens and business’ interactions with public authorities will be faster and more effective, also across the borders. A greater number of people will be able to live safely and independently, and those from disadvantaged groups will be able to get fully involved in society. Last but not least, ICT will help tackling environmental issues, such as energy saving, in the perspective of a sustainable growth. This booklet lists projects that illustrate these benefits and show the strong potential in addressing and solving societal challenges.

Many EU countries use electronic procurement (eProcurement) to make bidding for public sector contracts simpler and more efficient. However, these solutions are often implemented at national level only, withlimited coordination cross-borders. The European Commission’s pilot project PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) has recently successfully completed its first year of activities towards making electronic communication between companies and government bodies possible for all procurement processes in the EU.

Learn about the policies and projects really making a difference to the eParticipation landscape in Europe.

This publication highlights new cutting edge research in this field, with a compendium of projects supported under the first round of EU funding from the Seventh Framework Programme for Research. The 70 projects, worth nearly EUR 300 million of EU research investment, with an additional EUR 200 million from the academia and industry involved in them, represent international public-private partnerships addressing the key challenges for the development of the Future Internet.

This bi-monthly newsletter is published by the eGovernment and Competitiveness and Innovation framework Programme (CIP) Unit at the Information Society and Media Directorate General of the European Commission. It will bring relevant news on the Unit's activities and latest developments in the eGov field.

The project CoBIs is developing a radically new approach to business processes by embedding "intelligent tags" within the products and physical equipment being used which enables them to interact and behave as "collaborative business items".

The Research in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies is included in a wide range of EU-funded projects concentrating on subjects within the area of Information and Communication Technologies.

The project PROMISE is developing an embedded "tagging" system that can record information on a product throughout its entire life cycle.

Leaflet explaining the basics on the 7th Framework Programme and the ICT elements within it, the 7 key Research Challenges, the budget breakwdown, the i2010 Flagship Initiatives, the European Technology Platforms and Joint Technology Initiatives.

A short (11 page) brochure on how Information and Communication Technologies are contributing to a competitive and incluse knowledge-based society in Europe's regions. Available in English.

The 5th issue of Synergy analyses how European public bodies may benefit from Open Source Software. Its main actions focus on saving on license costs and potentially on administration and development costs. Collaboration, sharing of ideas and code also constitute an integral part of it. Synergy is the quarterly publication of IDABC, the Community programme that focuses on the cross-border dimension and interoperability of e-government services in Europe.

Projects stories on the cars exhibited at the launching event of the "Intelligent Car Initiative" on 23 February 2006 in Brussels

There are an estimated 300 million car drivers in the EU Member States. Most would welcome any means to ease driving, with fewer delays and less chance of getting injured. Most are aware, even if they don’t often think about it, that a road accident could ruin their lives in an instant. The Commission’s “intelligent car” initiative aims to prevent car crashes and cut traffic congestion. Pollution, traffic safety and congestion are truly European problems affecting all 25 EU Member States. We need to find common European solutions. This is what the European Commission Communication on Intelligent Cars sets out to do.

The EIF is the reference document on interoperability for the IDABC programme. It is the result of an extensive consultation process with the Member States and thus represents the highest ranking module for the implementation of European e-government services.

The new PSI brochure has just been published in English. The public sector is the single biggest producer of information in Europe. Examples are geographic information, business information, statistics and traffic information. This information resource has a considerable social and economic potential which is largely untapped. For example, the digitization and availability of 'raw' geographic data can allow private companies to develop new added-value services and products.

This issue of Euroabstracts, bimonthly review published on CORDIS, features an interview with Dr Knut Blind, the leader of a recently published investigation into how regulatory frameworks affect the innovation process.