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Home > Resources > Information Society in Portugal timeline

Information Society Portugal Chronology

 - 13/10/2008

1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008

Graphs showing progress in selected Information Society indicators

1991

  • February
    • 26
      • Presentation of the 1st Web browser, the World Wide Web (later Nexus), by its inventor Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN – European Organisation for Nuclear Research
  • November
    • 11
      • FCCN - Foundation for National Scientific Computation, set up in 1987, starts registering .pt domains.
      • PUUG – Portuguese Unix Users Group launches a “gateway” email service (via UUCP or TCP/IP over X.25).
      • Brisa introduces the Via Verde automatic electronic toll payment system in the Lisbon area.
      • MULTIBANCO breaks the 3 million ATM card and 200 million operations mark.
      • Formal launch of the INFOCID project – Citizens’ Interdepartmental Information System by the Administrative Modernisation Secretariat, with the aim of creating a virtual one-stop shop for citizens contacting the Central Government. The service was initially made available by videotext in 1993, then multimedia kiosks in public places and was made available on the Internet in 1995.

1992

      • Beginning of the development of the CETbase information system on theatre in Portugal, which included more than 12,800 shows, 9,000 texts and 34,300 people by the end of 2007, at the Theatre Studies Centre, a research unit at the University of Lisbon's Faculdade de Letras funded by the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT).
      • Installation of an experimental fibre optic broadband network in Mangualde with three telecommunity service centres, including TV distribution, telephony, video-conferencing and telematic services – health, central government, courses and educational games.
  • June
      • The 1st WWW server in Portugal set up at LNEC - National Civil Engineering Laboratory.

1993

  • April
    • 22
      • Launch of Mosaic 1.0, the 1st Web browser including pictures and text developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In January 1994, Mosaic 1.0 held 97% of the browser market.
    • 30
      • WorldWideWeb/Nexus was placed in the public domain by CERN, thus becoming freeware.

1994

      • Development and experimental operation of BBSRia (Bulletin Board System Ria), a series of WWW technology-based forums with a Beta version of the http protocol, granted by CERN, involving around 40 bodies: The universities of Aveiro and Minho, the CET – Telecommunications Studies Centre, schools, enterprises, hotels, central government, other public and private institutions and residential users. This system operated until 1997.
  • January
      • Creation of Yahoo! with more than 1.5 billion estimated visitors in 2008, with 3.4 billion views per day. At the beginning of August 2008, it was the top site in terms of traffic (page views).
  • February
      • Start of the privatisation process of the NSFNET Internet backbone initiated by the NSF – National Science Foundation, a governmental agency funding science in the USA that had created and maintained this backbone from 1986 linking more than 200 higher education institutions with the creation of the vBNS– Very High Speed Backbone Service (Internet2) for research and education and the allocation of NAPs – Network Access Points to private bodies allowing them to operate links between the vBNS, federal and commercial networks. These points were set up from mid-1993 on and it was stipulated that regional research and education networks would have connections via the NAPs from October 1994. This changeover took six months and it was decided that VBNS would be the only backbone server maintained by the NSF, which was instituted from August 1996.
  • March
    • 29
      • The colloquium “Portugal on the Internet” held at LNEC.
  • May
    • 26
      • Bangemann Report – Europe and the Global Information Society, on specific measures for the consideration of the European Community and Member States for the infrastructures in the sphere of information, which was prepared at the request of the European Council at its meeting in Brussels in December 1993 for consideration at its meeting on 24th -25th June in Corfu.
  • June
  • September
      • Launch of the paid Internet access commercial service by Telepac (maximum speed: 9600 bps).
  • October
    • 14
      • Launch of the Web browser Mosaic Netscape 0.9 (later named Netscape Navigator) by the company Mosaic Communications Corporation, founded on 4th April 1994 by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark and which became known as Netscape from 14th November, the 1st company to capitalise on the Web (the value of shares increased more than fivefold on the first day they were listed, 9th August 1995). In April 1996, Netscape Navigator, which claimed to be a browser that could operate regardless of the operating system used, held 89% of the browser market.
  • November
      • Creation of SAPO – Portuguese Domain Pointer Service by a team at the University of Aveiro’s Informatics Centre. In 1997 this became the basis of the Navegante company founded by the creators of SAPO, which was sold in 1998 to the company Saber&Lazer and to PT Multimedia in 1999.
      • Launch of the 1st Web version of a Portuguese paper publication: "Blitz".
      • Launch of the 1st live radio broadcast on the Internet in Portugal by Rádio Comercial.
      • Launch of the 1st edition of Público Online, under the technical responsibility of the Faculty of Sciences, Lisbon.

1995

  • February
      • The first two Telepac POP (Internet access points) begin operating in Lisbon and Porto (maximum access speed 14 400 bps).
      • All toll booths in Portugal now equipped with the “Via Verde” system.
  • April
      • Telepac registers 2,000 Internet access service clients.
    • 30
      • End of the NSFNET backbone Internet operation that had been set up and maintained by the NSF – National Science Foundation, following the privatisation process that began in February 1994.
  • June
      • Amazon.com, predominantly book-focussed e-commerce company set up by Jeffrey Bezos, publishes its site on the Web. It had 17 million customers by the end of 1999. In 2007, it turned over 14.8 billion dollars with a profit of 476 million dollars.
    • 27
      • Jornal de Notícias becomes the top national daily newspaper with an on-line version.
  • July
      • Esotérica (with roughly 400 customers) starts providing Internet access.
      • The Internet Service Provider Ip Global starts business. It was created at INESC – AITEC and was later purchased by Novis.
  • August
      • Microsoft’s Web browser Internet Explorer launched after development work based on Mosaic licenses purchased from Spyglass Mosaic, a spinoff of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which was set up to market NCSA technologies. In August 2006, Internet Explorer, which was already available in version 3, held 96% of the browser market.
      • INFOCID – Citizens’ Interdepartmental Information System was made available on the Internet. It was the first system worldwide to include information and services from more than 50 public bodies, pre-empting the central government one-stop movement for dealing with the public and which was continued in 2004 by the Citizen's Portal.
      • Rádio Comercial becomes the 1st radio station in Portugal to broadcast live online.
  • October
      • Creation at the FCCN of Pix - Portuguese Internet Exchange, the 1st Exchange Point in Portugal, with 4 partners at the time: RCCN – National Scientific Community Network, Telepac, EUnetPT and IP Global. The latter two later became part of Novis Telecom.

1996

      • Opening of the 1st e-commerce portals in Portugal: Telepac’s CidadeVirtual, Esotérica’s Virtual Shopping Center and Consiste’s HiperVirtual.
      • Opening of the 1st cybercafé in Portugal: Cyber.Bica, in Chiado in Lisbon.
      • Start of development of telemedicine applications by INESC Aveiro, INESC Porto and CET, based on remote diagnosis systems and cooperative work and real-time transmission of ecographies and echocardiograms between the paediatrics services of the following hospitals: Infante D. Pedro in Aveiro, Coimbra Paediatrics, Santo André in Leiria and Maria Pia in Porto, and Júlio Dinis Maternity in Porto.
  • March
    • 21
    • 28
      • The FCCN became known as the Foundation for National Scientific Computation.
  • June
    • 22
      • 1st Mission Forum for the Information Society at Penha Longa, 22nd – 23rd June.
  • July
  • August
      • Conclusion of the privatisation process of the NSFNET Internet backbone, which began in mid-1993, with the NSF now only maintaining the vBNS – Very High Speed Backbone Service (Internet2) for research and education.
  • October
      • Launch of the Internet na Escola (Internet at School) Programme.
  • December
    • 14
      • 2nd Mission Forum for the Information Society at Penha Longa, 14th – 15th June.

1997

      • Creation of the RCTS - Science Technology and Society Network at the FCCN - Foundation for National Scientific Computation, as an extension of the earlier National Scientific Community Network (RCCN), which in addition to connecting academic and higher education institutions, was also tasked with ensuring connections for elementary and secondary schools, public libraries, museums and bodies of an associative, cultural, scientific and educational nature, including citizens’ associations and those for citizens with special needs. This expansion meant that in 1999, the RCTS included the roughly 1,700 5th to 12th year schools, 220 schools from the first cycle, with all schools to be connected by 2001, 250 public libraries, 15 museums and 80 NGOs of an associative, cultural, scientific and educational nature.
      • Creation of UARTE – Telematic Educational Network Support Unit, charged with providing activities promoting Internet use in schools.
      • Launch of the first Portuguese home banking initiatives by Banco Português do Atlântico, Banco Nacional Ultramarino and Barclays Bank.
  • April
  • June
      • International RCTS connectivity increases from 1 Mbps to 3 Mbps.
  • September
      • Conclusion of the 1st phase of the Internet at School Programme with 1,600 schools connected to the Internet via RDIS through multimedia computers (all schools from 5th to 12th years).
  • December
    • 14
      • 1st pilot electronic voting experiment in Portugal conducted in local elections in the ward of S. Sebastião da Pedreira (Lisbon). Portugal thus became the 5th European country to conduct an electronic vote experiment, following the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain, and the 9th in the world after the aforementioned countries, the United States of America, Canada, Brazil and the Philippines.
    • 20
      • Approval for income tax deductions for computers for personal use, modems, RDIS cards and terminal equipment over the 1998-2001 period(State Budget Law for 1998, Art. 43, of 20th December 1997).
      • 1st Instant Messenger made available - ICQ (I Seek You) – launched by the Israeli company Mirablis, which was purchased by AOL in 1999. Microsoft later released MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger and Windows Live Messenger, which became the most-used system of this type with more than 230 million users.

1998

      • 1st Portuguese online bookshop Mediabooks, owned by Texto Editora, opened.
  • February
      • International RCTS connectivity increases to 14 Mbps, compared with 1 Mbps until May 1997.
    • 2
      • Measures regarding non-recognition of the year 2000 by certain IT systems defined and Central Government achieving the objectives for the Information Society in the Green Paper (Council of Ministers' Resolution No. 16/98, of 2nd February).
      • Launch of the Digital Cities Programme (1998-2000), managed and funded by Science and Technology Foundation (FCT), with funding from the Telecommunications Operational Intervention, located in the Alentejo, Aveiro, Bragança, Castelo Branco, Guarda, Marinha Grande and Vila Real and including a special project with ethnic minorities on the outskirts of Lisbon and in Setúbal.
      • Petition for Portuguese Internet Accessibility handed in online to the Portuguese Parliament, with approximately 9,000 signatures collected online. This petition, promoted by the Portuguese Accessibility Initiatives Groups, was the first to be delivered online in Portugal and also the first to collect signatures online.
  • March
  • April
      • Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) makes databases available online of the activities it supports (scholars, R&D projects, R&D units, meetings, publications and scientific societies) organised to set up a secure platform linking the scientific community online, becoming the most advanced S&T funding institution in terms of making this type of platforms available.
  • May
    • 6
      • Stipulation that directorate-generals, equivalent services and public institutions must have an email address to be contacted on by citizens and public and private bodies and to publicise said address, and that correspondence transmitted electronically shall have the same value as that in paper format (Council Of Ministers' Resolution No. 60/98, of 6th May).
    • 15
      • Start of the Portuguese Language Computing Processing Programme, whose objective was to encourage making good the delay in the availability of computing tools for processing Portuguese.
      • Start of the Portuguese Language Computing Processing Programme, which, among other tasks, involved obtaining, organising and making information available to the public on the Internet regarding scholars, projects and research units in the area, as well as access to the processing corpora and tools, and preparing the creation of a resource centre for the Portuguese language, the Linguateca, which was launched in May 2000.
  • June
      • Start of pilot project at FCCN for the transition to IPv6.
  • July
      • Launch of the preparation process of the White Paper on Portuguese Scientific and Technological Development (1999-2006) and opening a Standing Forum on S&T Policy on the Internet. The FCT and OCT organised roughly 30 public debate sessions involving more than 3,500 participants, researchers, heads of units, company and public and private bodies’ representatives at various locations throughout the country between February and May 1999. The contributions that were collected were used to prepare the Operational Science, Technology and Innovation Programme (POCTI) and the Operational Information Society Programme (POSI), which, after a negotiation process by a Portuguese team coordinated by Luis Magalhães, FCT President, were approved in July 2000 in the scope of CSF III (2000-2006) with total funding of 1.8 billion Euros.
  • September
    • 1
    • 15
      • Launch of the Google.com domain by Google Inc. Itself set up a week beforehand. It became the leader of the search engine market in 2000 and held more than 50% of this market in August 2007, followed by Yahoo with a mere 20%. It became the largest American company in terms of market capitalisation that is not part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the end of 2007. In May 2008, it had 135 million visitors in the USA alone. At the beginning of August 2008, it was the second site in terms of traffic (page views).
  • October
  • November
      • Creation of the ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, as an international non-profit public utility organisation based in California, USA, tasked with coordinating the system of allocating names on the Internet, keeping the Internet safe, stable and interoperable, and promoting competition for registering Internet names, managing the DNS – Domain Identification System – previously managed by IANA – Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, under the US Government's Department of Commerce.
  • December
    • 31
      • State Budget for 1999 Law foresees tax benefits on income tax for the purchase of computers and other IT equipment.

1999

      • Launch of the 1st Portuguese newspaper to be published exclusively online - Diário Digital.
  • March
    • 2
      • 1st meeting of the GAC – Governmental Advisory Committee, in Singapore, comprising representatives of governments and states, public authorities from world regional economies and several intergovernmental organisations as an advisory body for the ICANN with the objective of reflecting on public policy prospects of ICANN allocations.
  • April
  • May
    • 5
      • Approval of the WCAG 1.0 – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 1.0 by W3C – World Wide Web Consortium.
  • June
      • GEOCID, an Internet portal from which any citizens can access the National Geographic Information System network, made available.
    • 8
      • General rules on coordinating the purchase and use of information technologies in Central Government defined and specific rules set for the hire or purchase of IT goods or services (Decree Law No. 196/99, of 8th June).
  • August
  • September
      • 1st version of an Internet corpora server made available after being unveiled in Évora in the scope of the Portuguese Computing Processing project.
    • 18
  • November
    • 19
    • 22
      • Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) – introduces an application and evaluation system for R&D projects, SAPIENS – Submission and Assessment of Proposals on a Safer Internet. With this, it stood at the forefront in terms of the use of these systems worldwide and setting an advanced and ground-breaking example of eGovernment (the USA’s NSF – National Science Foundation pioneered electronic project applications in 1989 and set the objective of 100% electronic applications in 2000, which was not achieved. In Europe, this type of system started to be introduced as an experiment in 1996-9 under the EU’s Research Framework Programme, yet electronic applications were fewer than 5% in 1999 for agencies funding research in European countries. The most advanced were the United Kingdom’s Research Councils, yet they continued to put off introducing electronic applications).
      • The FCT introduced the most advanced Internet assessment system for R&D project applications in the world at a time when the NSF was gearing up to launch an experimental system in 2000. This system remained streets ahead of any other throughout the world for the next 3 years.
      • The FCT also introduced advanced electronic signatures in this area, becoming the 1st body to use electronic signatures in Portugal, less than four months after the corresponding legislation was approved.
    • 30
      • Signature of the protocol between the Ministry of Science and Technology, Telecel and SUN Microsystems regarding the creation of a free email service with capacity for 1 million user mailboxes, which was later labelled Megamail.

2000

      • 15 years after its launch, the Multibanco system has more than 7,800 ATMs (cashpoints) and more than 78,700 terminals for in-store payment.
      • FCCN, Telecel and SUN Microsystems launch the MegaMail project, with the goal of making a million free email addresses available.
      • Opening of NetViagens, the 1st exclusively online travel agency in Portugal.
      • TV station SIC launches its multimedia portal, SIC Online.
  • February
      • First annotated corpora in the scope of the Portuguese Language Computing Processing project made freely available on the Internet.
    • 26
      • Signature of a protocol between the Ministry of Science & Technology (MCT) and the National Association of Portuguese municipalities to extend the RCTS - Science Technology and Society Network – to 1st cycle elementary schools (EB1), stipulating that the MCT shall provide and ensure RDIS connections for all EB1 schools, providing them with access to various RCTS IP services, space for hosting their own Internet pages, email mailboxes, technical support and educational support through uARTE – Telematic Educational Network Support Unit.
  • March
    • 10
      • Burst of the dot.com bubble. The NASDAC hit a high of 5.132.52, more than twice the value the year before falling to a quarter of the value a year and a half later. It has since recovered, reaching slightly more than half the maximum value seen in March 2000 in 2008.
    • 24
      • Presidency Conclusions on the Lisbon Strategy at the EU Council in Lisbon, presided by Portugal.
    • 30
      • Public presentation of the R&D project “Selective Access in Portuguese to the Database of Opinions of the Advisory Council of the State Prosecutor of the Republic”, conducted in a consortium between the Office of the State Prosecutor, the Universidade Nova de Lisboa's Faculty of Science and Technology and the Heurística company, with funding from the Praxis XXI programme.
  • April
    • 10
      • Conference on the Information and Knowledge Society in Europe – Towards a Europe of Information and Knowledge, “e-Europe: a Web of Knowledge”, held during the Portuguese Presidency of the EU at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, 10th -11th April 2000.
    • 18
    • 19
      • Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) – and the “Público” newspaper sign a protocol on the rights of use for texts encompassing 180 million words to set up a corpus (CETEMPúblico) as a working basis for R&D projects in Portuguese language computing processing.
  • May
      • Launch of the Linguateca, Resource Centre for Portuguese Language Computing Processing to provide exhaustive information online about resources in this field: Scientific institutions, researchers, scholars, scientific publications, theses, corpora and other tools for Portuguese language computing processing and providing access to some of these tools. Following the FCT President’s guidelines, the Centre was structured online with representations in the main research centres working in this field in Portugal and abroad, firstly with the Oslo office at SINTEF.
    • 8
      • Signature of a protocol between Science and Technology Foundation (FCT), ISCTE, the Historic Overseas Archive, The National Library, Porto Municipal Museum, Lisbon City Council (Museu da Cidade), the Historic Military Archive, the Central Navy Library/Central Archive, Lisbon Geography Society, the National Archive of Brazil, the Directorate for Navy Historical and Cultural Patrimony of Brazil, the Army Historical Archive of Brazil, the National Library Foundation of Brazil, and the Ministry of Foreign Relations Map Library of Brazil for cooperation in the scope of the project “Urban Morphologies of Portuguese Cities”, whose objectives included setting up a Virtual Archive for Urban Cartography and research into the urban morphologies of Portuguese cities.
    • 20
  • June
  • July
  • August
  • September
  • October
      • International RCTS connectivity increases to 44 Mbps, compared with 1 Mbps until May 1997.
      • Linguateca the Resource Centre for Portuguese Language Computing Processing makes the CETEMPúblico European Portuguese corpus available online free.
    • 2
      • Definition of the usage conditions and requirements for invoices or equivalent documents sent electronically (Regulatory Decree No. 16/2000, of 2nd October).
      • 1st meeting of the Interministerial Commission for the Information Society.
  • November
  • December
    • 15
      • 2nd meeting of the Interministerial Commission for the Information Society.
    • 29
      • Amendment of the Patronage of the Arts Statute to include patronage for the Information Society.

2001

      • Foundation of Creative Commons, a private, non-profit association that was set up to develop licenses enabling authors to share knowledge work simply, efficiently and flexibly, via a series of standard licenses which guarantee protection and freedom – with some reserved rights.
      • Installation of 1Gbps gateways at PIX, installed at FCCN, from then on known as GigaPIX.
      • Launch of the Minho Campus Party, a “LAN party” motivated by high speed access to the Net.
      • SIBS and UNICRE launch the rechargeable MBNet credit card for online payments.
  • January
      • Linguateca the Resource Centre for Portuguese Language Computing Processing makes the two-directional COMPARA English - Portuguese corpus available online free. This resource enables users to obtain translations for a word in several sentence contexts.
    • 8
    • 15
      • Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launch the Wikipedia website, designed as a universal encyclopaedia in all major languages driven by voluntary contributions via the Internet (Web 2.0). Wikipedia had more than 10 million articles in more than 250 languages, more than 75,000 contributors and more than 684 million visitors per year in April 2008. At the beginning of August 2008, it was the eight most popular site in terms of traffic (page views).
    • 25
  • February
      • International RCTS connectivity increases to 81 Mbps, compared with 1 Mbps until May 1997.
    • 5
      • Direct Public Service (INFOCID) made available online.
    • 8
      • Tender launched to set up Internet Spaces throughout the country in the scope of POSI - Operational Information Society Programme.
    • 12
      • FCCN makes it possible to register the 1st .pt sub domains: .name.pt, .org.pt, int.pt, edu.pt, net.pt, gov.pt and com.pt.
    • 27
  • March
  • April
      • Creation of the Solidarity Network within the RCTS, comprising Non-Governmental Organisations of and for the handicapped, elderly or those at risk of exclusion. This network included 84 organisations in February 2002 and by the end of 2002 had grown to 127 organisations.
    • 6
      • Made mandatory for employers employing 10 or more workers to declare pay digitally or via the Internet to the solidarity and social security services (Decree Law No. 106/2001, of 6th April).
    • 20
      • 3rd meeting of the Interministerial Commission for the Information Society.
  • May
  • June
      • Linguateca, the Resource Centre for Portuguese Language Computing Processing makes the first trees from the Syntactical Forest available online free.
    • 25
      • Calls for tender launched for projects producing or making Portuguese content of public interest available in digital format in the scope of POSI - Operational Information Society Programme.
  • July
    • 5
    • 22
      • Publication of the Best Practice Guide for the Construction of Direct or Indirect State Administration Websites by the OCT – Science and Technology Observatory.
    • 24
      • Call for tender opened for projects under the Support Fund for Promoting the Information Society in the scope of POSI - Operational Information Society Programme.
      • Call for tender launched for Qualifying for the Open State – Modernising Central Government projects launched in the scope of POSI - Operational Information Society Programme.
  • August
  • October
    • 2
      • 4th meeting of the Interministerial Commission for the Information Society.
      • OCT – Science and Technology Observatory given competences for the basic IT skills diploma in: a) Centralising information on diploma awards; b) Maintaining an up-to-date record of monitoring indicators and exams held; c) Maintaining an up-to-date record of the different bodies awarding the diploma, contributing to the respective consistency and coordination efforts; d) Defining the model diploma to be issued to successful candidates (Order No. 20634/2001, of 2nd October).
  • November
    • 2
      • Call for tender opened for Digital Cities and Digital Regions Projects in the scope of POSI - Operational Information Society Programme.
  • December
    • 12
      • APDSI – Association for the Development of the Information Society founded.
    • 16
      • 2nd pilot electronic voting experiment in Portugal conducted in local elections in the wards of Sobral de Monte Agraço and Campelo (Baião).
      • All basic and secondary schools now have RDIS connections to the Internet.
      • OCT – Science and Technology Observatory makes the ISI/Thomson Web of Knowledge available (titles and summaries of articles from 8450 journals and minutes from roughly 10,000 conferences per year, quote and impact information, records since 1945) as a first step towards the “National |Online S&T Library”, as foreseen in POCTI – Operational Science, Technology and Innovation Programme for the European Commission which was submitted to the European Commission in November 1999, and the start of negotiations with international scientific publishing houses with a view to making entire texts from scientific journal articles available to this library. This followed on from the preparatory work that exhaustively analysed the subscription contracts to scientific journals of Portuguese institutions which the OCT carried out in 2000-2001.

2002

  • January
      • The Via Verde system, which was launched in 1991, now has nearly 1.3 million subscribers – more than 50% of motorway toll users in Portugal.
      • Approval of the Internet@EB1 Programme, coordinated by FCCN - Foundation for National Scientific Computation for monitoring schools in the 1st cycle of elementary education by Higher Education Schools from polytechnic institutes, the aim being to promote and facilitate Internet use for educational purposes in these schools and to promote teacher training in specific educational situations.
    • 12
    • 31
  • February
      • Publication of the 1st External Assessment of Websites on the Internet belonging to Bodies Directly or Indirectly part of the State Administration, prepared by Accenture for the OCT - Science and Technology Observatory.
    • 4
      • Launch of the Tele-aula project to help bedridden children learn using ICT, based on a protocol signed by the Ministry of Science & Technology, Dona Estefânia Hospital and the Ministry of Education.
    • 11
      • FCT opens a call for tender for R&D projects for Autonomous Mobile Robot teams in Cooperation/Competition – Improving Scientific Competences to take part in the Robot World Soccer Cup.
    • 20
      • FCT launches call for tender for R&D projects in Advanced Networking Technologies – New Protocols, Security and High Speed, including IPv6 systems.
    • 25
      • 5th meeting of the Interministerial Commission for the Information Society.
  • March
      • International RCTS connectivity increases to 622 Mbps, compared with 1 Mbps until May 1997. International RCTS connectivity has increased by 622 times in less than 5 years.
    • 2
    • 3
      • Call for tender launched for the Programme for the Creation of Public Internet Access Posts in parish councils in the scope of POSI - Operational Information Society Programme.
    • 20
      • Competences allocated for the creation of an Internet site advertising job vacancies in the science and technology area, stating the information that should be given on it (Decree Law No. 67/2002, 20th March).
    • 29
      • Programme for the Creation of Public Internet Access Posts in parish councils launched.
  • April
    • 3
    • 12
    • 30
      • OCT - Science and Technology Observatory tasked with issuing instructions regarding the practical exam to obtain the basic IT skills diploma (Order No. 8888/2002, of 30th April).
      • Accreditation for issuing the basic IT skills diploma given to: Espaços Internet (Internet Spaces), Ciência Viva Centres and other bodies affiliated to the Ciência Viva – National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture, bodies that are part of the Digital Cities and Digital Regions projects, the Foundation for National Scientific Computation, public and private scientific and technological research institutions recognised by Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) as having activities in the information technology area (Order No. 8889/2002, of 30th April).
  • May
  • June
  • September
      • CERT.PT set up in the scope of the FCCN-run RCTS, the only response tea, for IT security incidents in Portugal. The team was internationally accredited from this date until 2007 when a further team was accredited.
      • Linguateca, the Resource Centre for Portuguese Language Computing Processing, makes the CETENFolha corpus available online free. CETENFolha (Corpus of Electronic Text Extracts/Folha de S. Paulo) is a corpus of approximately 24 million words in Brazilian Portuguese, set up by the Portuguese Language Computing Processing Programme that resulted in Linguateca, based on texts from the S. Paulo newspaper that partly make up the NILC/São Carlos corpus compiled by the Interinstitutional Computing Linguistics Nucleus (NILC).
  • Outubro
  • November
      • Launch of the Lisbon hub of the Linguateca Resource Centre for Portuguese Language Computing Processing, COMPARA, at the FCCN.
    • 20
      • New institutional framework set out for Government activities in the Information Society, innovation and eGovernment, which included the creation of UMIC - Innovation and Knowledge Mission Unit and the CIIC – Interministerial Innovation and Knowledge Commission (Council of Ministers’ Resolution No. 135/2002, of 20th November).
  • December
    • 18
      • 1st meeting of the CIIC – Interministerial Innovation and Knowledge Commission.

2003

2004

  • January
  • February
    • 2
    • 4
      • Launch of the social networking website Facebook, which received 124 million unique visitors in May 2008. At the beginning of August 2008, it was the fifth most popular site in terms of traffic (page views).
  • March
  • April
      • Replicator of one of the DNS – Domain Name System world root servers installed at FCCN (there were 13 of these servers in 2007, 4 of which were outside the USA) with an ISC – Internet Systems Consortium connection to GigaPix.
    • 19
      • Launch of b-on: Online Knowledge Library, which had been foreseen in 1999 in POCTI under the name “National Online S&T Library”, and for which the OCT – Science and Technology Observatory laid the groundwork through a series of actions, namely: OCT conducted an exhaustive survey in 2000-2001 of subscriptions to and the costs of scientific periodical publications for Portuguese institutions to act as the primary information for negotiations with international publishing houses; OCT made the ISI/Thomson Web of Knowledge available in December 2001; OCT began negotiations with international publishing houses for national subscriptions so that entire texts from the respective scientific periodical publications could be made available digitally.
    • 29
  • May
    • 3
      • UMIC - Innovation and Knowledge Mission Unit given the powers and competences from the Citizens’ Integrated Administrative Information System (INFOCID) and the Direct Public Service (Decree Law No. 98/2004, of 3rd May).
  • June
      • The Portuguese Language Computing Processing Resource Centre Linguateca XLDB hub makes 2003 WPT03 Portuguese web collection available free on the Internet (roughly 12 GB). WPT 03 was put together with crawlers from the Tumba! Search engine set up by the XLDB Group. It has 3,775,611 documents, of which 69% (2,590,641) are written in Portuguese.
    • 13
      • 3rd pilot electronic voting experiment conducted in Portugal in the European Parliament elections in the parishes of Mirandela (Mirandela), Paranhos (Porto), Mangualde (Viseu), São Bernardo (Aveiro), Sé (Portalegre), Belém (Lisbon), São Sebastião (Setúbal), Salvador (Beja), Salir (Loulé), in which 9% of voters took part.
    • 14
    • 16
      • Definition of the way judicial procedures sent by email can be presented for judgement, in addition to the notifications issued by the court secretariat to the parties' lawyers (Ministerial Decree No. 642/2004, of 16th June).
    • 25
      • Proposal to reshape POSI - Operational Information Society Programme, which then became the POSC – Knowledge Society Operational Plan.
  • July
  • August
    • 14
      • Call for tender launched for the creation of public Internet access spaces in Public Municipal Libraries, Toy & Leisure libraries and Municipal Museums and Archives under POSI - Operational Information Society Programme.
      • Call for tender launched for projects aiming to provide pre-school establishments that belong to the state network with IT equipment under POSI - Operational Information Society Programme.
  • September
    • 18
      • Transposition of Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 12th July concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Law No. 41/2004, of 18th September).
    • 21
    • 22
      • Call for tender launched for public e-Procurement projects in ministries in the scope of POSI - Operational Information Society Programme.
  • October
  • November
  • December

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Graphs showing progress in selected Information Society indicators

Internet Penetration in the Population – Total and Broadband: total, cable+optical fibre+mobile(active users), optical fibre+mobile (active users), mobile (active users)
%, Customers in the total population, in each semester

Alternative access: Internet Penetration in the Population – Total and Broadband: total, cable+optical fibre+mobile(active users), optical fibre+mobile (active users), mobile (active users) - contains data table and graph - (xls | 86KB)
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Internet Penetration in the Population – Total and Broadband: total, cable+optical fibre+mobile(active users), optical fibre+mobile (active users), mobile (active users), %, Customers in the total population, in each semester

Notes: Blank entries have values calculated by linear interpolation for graphical representation purposes.
Active mobile broadband users refers to customers who can access to mobile broadband Internet
and actually connected to the Internet at least once in the preceding month.

Source: ANACOM.

Broadband Penetration in the Population ≥ 10 Mbps in EU Member States
1st January 2011, (%)

Alternative access: Broadband Penetration in the Population ≥ 10 Mbps in EU Member States - contains data table and graph - (xls | 61KB)
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Broadband Penetration in the Population ≥ 10 Mbps in EU Member States, 1st January 2011, (%)

Note: Data for Austria is of 1 July 2009 (latest available data).

Source: COCOM, DG INFSO, European Commission, June 2011.

Mobile Broadband Penetration in the Population in EU member states - Dedicated data service (cards, modems, keys only)
1st January 2011, (%)

Alternative access: Mobile Broadband Penetration in the Population in EU member states - contains data table and graph - (xls | 61KB)
click the image below to amplify

Mobile Broadband Penetration in the Population in EU member states, 1st January 2011, (%)

Source: COCOM, DG INFSO, European Commission, June 2011.

Active Mobile Broadband Penetration in the Population in EU Member States
1st January 2011, (%), Number of customers (residential and nonresidential) who actually used mobile broadband in the past month per 100 inhabitants

Alternative access: Active Mobile Broadband Penetration in the Population in EU Member States - contains data table and graph - (xls | 61KB)
click the image below to amplify

Active Mobile Broadband Penetration in the Population in EU Member States, 1st January 2011, (%), Number of customers (residential and nonresidential) who actually used mobile broadband in the past month per 100 inhabitants

Note: No data available for France.

Source: COCOM, DG INFSO, European Commission, June 2011.

Internet Penetration in the Households (Total and Broadband)
%, Households with at least one person aged from 16 to 74.

Alternative access: Internet Penetration in the Households (Total and Broadband - contains data table and graph - (xls | 61KB)
click the image below to amplify

Internet Penetration in the Households (Total and Broadband,%, Households with at least one person aged from 16 to 74

Source: EUROSTAT.

Computer Penetration in the Households
%, Households with at least one person aged from 16 to 74.

Alternative access: Computer Penetration among Households - contains data table and graph - (xls | 56KB)
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Computer Penetration among Households,%, Households of at least one person aged from 16 to 74

Source: EUROSTAT.

International Connectivity of the RCTS - Science Technology and Society Network (1996-2002)
Giga bits per second (Gps), in July of each year

Alternative access: International Connectivity of the RCTS - Science Technology and Society Network (1996-2002) - contains data table and graph - (xls | 61KB)
click the image below to amplify

International Connectivity of the RCTS - Science Technology and Society Network (1996-2002), Giga bits per second (Gps), in July of each year

Source: UMIC - Knowledge Society Agency, P.I., based on information from FCCN - Foundation for National Scientific Computation.

International Connectivity of the RCTS - Science Technology and Society Network (2002-2008)
Giga bits per second (Gps), in July of each year

Alternative access: International Connectivity of the RCTS (2002-2008) - Science Technology and Society Network - contains data table and graph - (xls | 58KB)
click the image below to amplify

International Connectivity of the RCTS - Science Technology and Society Network (2002-2008), Giga bits per second (Gps), in July of each year

Source: UMIC - Knowledge Society Agency, P.I., based on information from FCCN - Foundation for National Scientific Computation.

Institutional Repositories in the Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal
Number of institutional repositories at the end of each year

Alternative access: Institutional Repositories in the Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal - contains data table and graph - (xls | 58KB)
click the image below to amplify

Institutional Repositories in the Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal, Number of institutional repositories at the end of each year

Source: UMIC - Knowledge Society Agency, P.I..

Documents in Scientific Open Access Repositories in Portugal
No. of documents at the end of each year

Alternative access: Registrations in Scientific Open Access Repositories in Portugal - contains data table and graph - (xls | 58KB)
click the image below to amplify

Documents in Scientific Open Access Repositories in Portugal, No. of documents at the end of each year

Source: Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC)

No. of Students per Computer in Elementary and Secondary Education (Total, w/ Internet connection)
No. in the academic year beginning in the indicated year.

Alternative access: No. of Students per Computer in Elementary and Secondary Education (Total, w/ Internet connection) - contains data table and graph - (xls | 29KB)
click the image below to amplify

No. of Students per Computer in Elementary and Secondary Education (Total, w/ Internet connection), No. in the academic year beginning in the indicated year

Source: GEPE - Office for Education Statistics and Planning.

Basic Public Services (Full Online Availability, Sophistication)
%, end of each year

Alternative access: Basic Public Services (Full Online Availability, Sophistication) - contains data table and graph - (xls | 58KB)
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Basic Public Services (Full Online Availability, Sophistication), %, end of each year

Source: Capgemini report prepared for the Directorate-General for the Information Society and Media of the European Commission.

Number Income Tax (IRS) Declarations Submitted through the Internet
Millions of declarations

Alternative access: Number Income Tax (IRS) Declarations Submitted through the Internet - contains data table and graph - (xls | 42KB)
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Number Income Tax (IRS) Declarations Submitted through the Internet

*Accumulated value.

Source: Direcção-Geral de Impostos, Portugal.

Last updated ( 25/11/2011 )