Heli Lehtimäki European Commission eContent European Digital Content on the Global Networks

Topics Programme structure and means Action lines with project examples No-go cases Wrap-up

Improving access to and expanding the use of public sector information Enhancing content production in a multilingual and multicultural environment Increasing dynamism of the digital content market Action Line 1 Action Line 2 Action Line 3 eContent : 100 million Euro Call 3 Call 1Call 2 Call 4 25 M€ %-45% 10%-15% 27 M€20 M€29 M€

Feasibility projects Demonstration projects Accompanying measures 5-10 % of projects financed 85% of projects financed 5-10% of projects financed Years some 80 funded projects Organisations from 31 participating countries (EU15+10AC+N, IS, LI, BU, RO, TR): 50% Small and Medium Sized private companies 30% Public bodies 20% Non-profit organisations, universities, others

Demonstration Projects AL Normal size partners Up to € 2.5 million EU funding Projects normally run 24 months (up to 30) Commercially viable (1.1. more than 2.2) Projects: Consortiums consisting of –At least 2 partners from at least 2 countries –A lead partner reporting to the EC EC Contributes 50% The final result belongs to the consortium Normal size partners Up to € 200,000 EU funding Projects normally run 9 months (up to 12) Test bed for early experimentation Feasibility Projects entire AL 1 and 2

Action line 1 Improving access to and expanding use of public sector information Call 4 European Digital data collections Public-private partnerships

What is public sector information? –Legal/administrative –Financial/economical –Culture, archives, entertainment, information material –Geographical data including land and property information, traffic information, environmental data –Services at local level such at education, health etc. –Science and technical information –And more…………………………….. Action line 1Public sector information Directive on re-use of Public sector information December 2003

Cross-border information services based on PSI New business and revenue models Public Sector Information Private sector Information Services € Content provision Value adding

Action Line 1.1 Services based on public sector information Objective Access to legal information for citizens Combine GI and legal information Develop a strategy and exploitation plan for value added services based around open access to public sector information (PSI) addressing laws. Market/Users Citizens, law professionals.

Partners

Action Line 2 Producing Content in a multilingual and multicultural environment Call 4 Partnerships between content and language industries Linguistic infrastructure

Content – in which language? English 35% (including US) Non-English 65% European roughly 35% Asian languages 26% (half of which Chinese) Tendency towards localised content! number of people online in each language zone (native speakers). Source:

What do we mean with localisation? Adapting, maintaining information products and services to local markets Not just translation of words or internationalisation of software > translating different cultures Identifying and showcasing best practice Action line 2Multilingual and multicultural environment

Action line 1Public sector information What is the purpose? To pool together the linguistic infrastructure in Europe to provide a convenient market place and access to it: -Networking of existing regional and national resources and their access and use by content actors -Development of new multilingual resources for less widely spoken languages - Covering an adequate number of languages Action line 2.2Enhanced linguistic infrastructure Lexicons, grammars,...

FUNSIEC: FUNSIEC: Feasibility for a UNified Semantic Infrastructure in the European Construction sector Feasibility project AL 2.2 Assess the feasibility to build an Open Semantic Infrastructure for European Construction Sector (OSIECS) to support the development of e-services Semantic and linguistic e-resources devoted to the construction sector Exploit public results produced by international initiatives and European projects

Establish a technical framework to gather semantic and linguistic e- resources to be used by content and e-service providers for the construction sector Define guidelines for partnerships that allow the creation, evolution and maintenance of OSIECS and the semantic resources Propose an implementation plan to help the adoption of OSIECS within the European construction sector Contribute to the establishment of EU standards (including reference linguistic resources) for construction within language diversity Identify and characterise the e-services to be developed by e-service providers aiming at to capitalise the benefits of the OSIECS FUNSIEC outputs

The “no-go” cases Call 4

No-eContent-AL1 NO Action Line 1 Objective Creation of a “Citizen Information Tool” for European municipalities. The tool will allow Municipalities to improve their services to the citizens making available on-line their administrative information. Market/Users Municipalities of Europe which will buy the tool. Citizens which will have better services. Too Technical => Development of a tool eGovernment => Service to the citizen No commercial exploitation of digital content

No-eContent-AL2 NO Action Line 2 Objective Creation and translation in three languages of a catalogue of medical products. The catalogue will be made available on the web. Market/Users Health Care Industry. No static translation of web sites or catalogues No expandability to other languages No easy way of keeping up to date the catalogue

What eContent is not: No technology research & development No eGovernment No pure translation eContent keywords: Business dimension – close to market Partnerships –Public-private –Content – language industries Readily available technology

What‘s in for educational establishements? 34 (out of 500) entities in 23 (out of 80) projects „eLearning“ projects such as Telestia (AL2) – online learning in fashion and clothing in six languages Harmos (AL1) - European multilingual data collection for multimedia music content for eLearning ready for exploitation But mostly in other types of projects e.g. –harmonising data collections –providing expertise (pedagogy, psychology, languages, legal information etc.)

Points of attention Timely delivery by 14 May hrs > evaluation in June > project start in early 2005 Importance of abstract and introduction consistency in work packages - project milestones - WP interdependencies reasoned structure of deliverables demonstration of co-financing capacity and resources available elaborated business model AL 1.1 (more than a WP promising to develop one later on!) description of the potential market, addressing competition or fall back options

Realities Up to now high oversupscription rate – current economic situation –Only excellent proposals will receive funding –Formally non-eligible and out of scope proposals consistently rejected With 80 funded projects and other existing actions in the market innovation becomes an issue Financial rules of the Commission –Impact on projects selected for funding –Joint liability – select your partners carefully!

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