Register before 31 October for the early bird fee. This conference is Europe's largest ICT research event in 2008 and takes place over three days from 25 - 27 November in Lyon, France. The event is organised by the European Commission in cooperation with the French Presidency of the European Union. It will examine EU priorities in ICT research for over €2 billion of funding available in 2009-2010. More than 4000 participants are expected to attend the event.

The Commission today approved a proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers on a new programme for the period 2010–15: “Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations” (ISA).

Europe could take the lead in the next generation of the Internet. The European Commission today outlined the main steps that Europe has to take to respond to the next wave of the Information Revolution that will intensify in the coming years due to trends such as social networking, the decisive shift to on-line business services, nomadic services based on GPS and mobile TV and the growth of smart tags. The report shows that Europe is well placed to exploit these trends because of its policies to support open and pro-competitive telecom networks as well as privacy and security. A public consultation has been launched today by the Commission on the policy and private sector responses to these opportunities. The Commission report also unveils a new Broadband Performance Index (BPI) that compares national performance on key measures such as broadband speed, price, competition and coverage. Sweden and the Netherlands top this European broadband league, which complements the more traditional broadband penetration index used so far by telecoms regulators.

Industrial research in nanoelectronics for a total amount of €427 million is planned by different consortia. The proposals are requesting €196 million of public funding to be raised by the involved Member States and the Commission, which is more than twice the amount originally foreseen. 265 participations, involving 158 organisations, out of 20 different European countries are involved in 12 proposals. 47% of the organisations are SMEs representing 22% of the requested funding. All major actors in the European semiconductor industry are included. Proposals target 3 social and economically important key lead markets: transport & mobility; security & safety; and energy & environment as well as design, equipment, material and manufacturing.

The European Broadband Portal (EBP) is a web service that aims to contribute to the development of broadband infrastructures and services in the European Union. It is a follow up action of the European Commission resulting from the Bridging the Broadband Gap Conference (14-15 May 2007, Brussels) which concluded that there was a need to support public authorities, especially in under-served areas, to improve the broadband deployment.

Are you interested in governance and participation tools, policy modelling, opinion visualisation, mass collaborative platforms, large-scale societal simulation? You are invited to provide your comments, views and contributions on the Community on ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling by visiting the ePractice.eu website.

The European Journal of ePractice invites contributions that assemble empirical evidence, such as surveys or case studies of the effectiveness of open source software and other approaches to eIdentification, authentication, security and interoperability. This issue of the Journal will explore if these initiatives have been key enablers of eGovernment and what lessons have been learned. The deadline for article submissions is 1 October, 2008.

In the month of June 2008 ePractice.eu, the European good practice exchange platform for eGovernment, eInclusion and eHealth practitioners, reached a number of over 100 000 visits.

Over 200 proposals were received by the time the Call for Proposals for Networking Sessions at ICT 2008 closed. Now website visitors can rate them and comment on them, influencing which proposals will be selected for the event taking place in Lyon, France in November.

Parents and children need to be able to call help quickly and free of charge while travelling in the EU. In the UK and Belgium alone more than 7,500 children were reported missing in 2007 (www.missingchildreneurope.eu). Public concern about child safety has been heightened by cases like the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal. In 2007, the Commission took action by reserving, at national level, six-digit numbers starting with 116 for missing children hotlines (116000) and for helplines (116111) with which children can seek assistance. However, a recent EU survey shows that only a minority of Member States have assigned these numbers to service providers: seven for 116000 and ten for 116111 (see Annex). The Commission today called on Member States to speed up implementation of these numbers. Under EU law Member States do not have to assign the numbers, but are required to reserve them and inform the public and providers of their availability. The survey shows few efforts by Member States to make known the numbers' availability, delaying their implementation.

Following a midterm evaluation in 2005, the final evaluation of the eTEN Programme has been published, covering the period from 2002 until programme end in December 2006.

With Slovenia joining the consortium in July 2008, RISER now increases its coverage to 9 European countries and 128 million inhabitants. RISER, co-funded by the eTEN-Programme, is one of the first cross-border eGovernment services in European civil registration, enabling address verification in official state registers.

Caselex started rolling out national Supreme Court cases on the application of the EU's abundant base of environmental law. Caselex - co-funded by the TEN Programme - 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, Caselex holds digests on more than 100 national decisions plus the relevant cases of the European Court of Justice.

15% of Europeans suffer from some form of disability, and many face barriers such as reading a website's small text or even knowing how to access websites and online services. Despite repeated calls by the EU and government leaders to improve this situation, progress remains limited: by far the majority of websites fail to use universally accepted user-friendly solutions. Today the European Commission launched a public consultation on further measures to make websites in Europe accessible, starting with those of public administrations, and invites stakeholders to give their views. It also addresses other technologies like digital television. The consultation is open until 27 August 2008.

The European Commission today launched two initiatives to improve the safety and quality of care to people who require medical assistance while travelling or living abroad: a Recommendation on cross-border interoperability of electronic health record (EHR) systems and the Smart Open Services (SOS) project. The Recommendation aims to provide Member States with basic principles and guidelines for ensuring that doctors can gain access to vital information on patients that they are trying to treat, wherever such information may be located in Europe. The SOS project, co-funded by the European Commission, is supported by 12 Member States and their industry players, to demonstrate the benefits of such interoperability. It will enable health professionals to access specific medical data such as current medications of patients from other EU countries. In an emergency, sharing of medical information could save many patients' lives.

Public bodies produce, collect and share vast amounts of information, such as meteorological, traffic and financial data, digital maps or tourist information. This valuable Public Sector Information can be the basis of new added value services, but it is often difficult for businesses and individuals to re-use it. The EU's Public Sector Information Directive of 2003 enhances the re-use of such information across the EU. Transposition of the Directive has now been completed in all 27 EU Member States, as the European Commission has now closed an infringement case against Belgium for non-transposition of the Directive. The Commission is currently evaluating the corresponding national laws in preparation of a review of the Public Sector Information Directive which is due by the end of 2008. It has launched a public consultation towards this aim, which is open until 31 July 2008.

On 23 June the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) adopted an Opinion on the proposed multiannual Community programme on protecting children using the Internet and other communication technologies, which was presented by the European Commission in February 2008.

Semantic interoperability — or the ability to exchange data across national, sectoral and linguistic boundaries while preserving the meaning of the data — is a major challenge for public administrations everywhere. As a first step towards meeting this challenge, the European Commission has launched the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe (SEMIC.EU), a single point of reference for semantic interoperability in Europe. It provides a valuable range of services and a collaboration platform for pan-European e-government projects.

Today, the eCall Memorandum of Understanding (eCall Mou) got the backing of Slovakia. Ľubomír Vážny, Minister of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications, signed the eCall MoU in the presence of Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for the Information Society and Media. Slovakia is the 14th EU Member State to sign the MoU, and thereby to commit itself to the timely implementation of this pan-European in-vehicle emergency call system.

EU Telecoms Ministers will meet on 12 June in Luxembourg. The Commission will be represented by Viviane Reding, EU Telecoms Commissioner. The Ministers will discuss several significant Telecoms dossiers, including the EU Telecoms Reform and the mid-term review of the i2010 strategy. The Council is also expected to agree on a general approach for the extension of the mandate of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).