Emerging Technologies News European Union National ICT Research Directors Forum, Prague European Union National ICT Research Directors Forum, Prague
- 22/04/2009The half-yearly meeting of the National ICT Research Directors Forum was held on 20th April 2009 in Prague, Czech Republic. This forum hosts Directors-General responsible for the Information and Communication Technologies area in the 27 EU Member States and the external associate countries of the EU Framework Research Programme.
The meeting included a presentation on the state of the preparations for the Internet of the Future Forum and its objectives, a presentation on public-private partnerships and their relations with the EIT and the JTI, and the proposal for a working party on European Large Scale Actions (ELSA).
After addressing the creation of the Internet of the Future Forum and its operational ramifications on funding for highly innovative projects demonstrated on a large scale that are deemed crucial for the future development of the Internet and ICT at the global level, Portugal emphasised that this type of action requires foreseeing flexible mechanisms to adapt to the rapid transformations that will be seen in this area as a matter of necessity, otherwise the ideas that are started risk becoming obsolete. Even more important in Portugal’s opinion is the need to foresee mechanisms that ensure the solutions adopted can be built on, so that they are open developments upon which innovative applications can be built by other stakeholders (just like the computer with its universal programmability and the Internet with its principle of end-to-end communication which has left considerable leeway for innovation at the reaches of communication networks) in order to avoid developments that may be dead-ends or may hamper more promising innovative developments, underscoring the fact that this is always a risk that is present in ambitious projects that aim to influence the technological future decisively.
Portugal is represented by the President of Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) at the National ICT Research Directors Forum.
The National ICT Research Directors Forum meeting was preceded by debates in parallel sessions on joining up ICT research and innovation with the response to social challenges, in relation to the Commission Communication “ICT Research and Innovation:Raising the Game”, the results of which were presented at the subsequent plenary session.
This was followed by the European Future Technologies Conference – Science Beyond Fiction on 21st -23rd April 2009, which was chiefly dedicated to developments in the scope of FET – Future and Emerging Technologies projects.