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The publication of the Information Society in Portugal 2010 ((i) Electronic Communications, (ii) Population and ICT, (iii) eGovernment, (iv) Education and ICT Training, (v) ICT in Hospitals, (vi) ICT in Enterprises, (vii) ICT in Hotel Units, (viii) e-Science: ICT in Scientific Research) provides a very complete view on the situation of the Information Society in Portugal in 2010 and its evolution in recent years. These data are compiled by the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) from several surveys of public responsibility, most of them on an annual basis, and they are published annually since 2006 in an integrated manner.

The data now published include time series since the beginning of the systematic phase of the corresponding surveys up to 2010, with the exception of the survey on ICT in Hotel Units whose latest data are for 2008 since it was decided that the following survey would be held in 2011 and thereafter every two years. The data also include benchmarking of several indicators in the Member States of the European Union (EU), in general based on EUROSTAT data. A summary of the main results follows this notice.

On July 1, 2011, at the Museum of Science of the University of Coimbra, within the initiative IBERCIVIS – Your Computer Does Science, the project SOLUVEL (site in Portuguese) was launched and the results of the project AMILOIDE (site in Portuguese) were presented. IBERCIVIS is a volunteer computing initiative, launched in July 2009 (see IBERCIVIS Initiative: Citizens Can Offer Their Computer Time to Science) in cooperation with Spain, allowing to bring together dispersed computing resources, in particular personal computers, by distributed computing techniques similar to Grid Computing (see INGRID – Portuguese National Grid Initiative) for the development of scientific projects. The computer becomes an open window on science, creating a channel for direct dialogue between researchers and society.

The Web Content Accessibility for citizens with special needs was discussed at a session of the Forum for the Information Society held on the 5th of May 5 of 2011, at the Auditorium of SIBS, organized jointly by the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), and the Association for the Promotion and Development of Information Society (APDSI).

This session of the Forum discussed the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) approved by the W3C – World Wide Web Consortium in December 2008, which were published in Portuguese by UMIC on the 25th of February of 2009 (see Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) of the W3C Published in Portuguese). Portuguese was the 3rd language in the world in which the new accessibility guidelines were published, only after the original English publication and an Hungarian translation published a few weeks before the Portuguese.

An article published in the January 2011 issue of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, under the title "Global Web Accessibility Analysis of National Government Portals and Ministry Web Sites" presented the first comprehensive analysis of the Web accessibility of 192 Member States of the United Nations (UN).

Portugal is ranked 2nd in the accessibility of government websites in the study, with a value of 97.57% of Web accessibility, surpassed only by Germany which has a value of 98.72% of web accessibility.

The 1st ceFIMS Project Newsletter was published on the 18th of February of 2011. The Special Feature of this Newsletter is the article "Cars That Talk: The Future of Intelligent Transportation Systems" which is subtitled "Portugal Has the Largest Vehicular Networks Testbed in Europe". The article refers to the network of 500 taxi cabs of Porto developed as part of the project DRIVE-IN - Distributed Routing and Infotainment through Inter-Vehicular Networking of the Carnegie Mellon – Portugal Program.

The DRIVE-IN project involves researchers from the universities of Porto and Aveiro, the Associate Laboratory Institute of Telecommunications, the enterprises NDrive and Geolink, and also the Institute for Mobility and Land Transport, the RadiTaxis Cooperative and the Carnegie Mellon – Portugal Program.

On February 2, 2011, the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) made publicly available the beta version of AccessMonitor (text in Portuguese), the automatic evaluator developed by UMIC for the WCAG 2.0 – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 approved by the W3C – World Wide Web Consortium on December 11, 2008, after a process of more than 8 years of open collaborative development of standards adopted by W3C and after the publication of 15 working versions before the final version. This new tool for assessing compliance with standards of accessibility of websites content, publicly available at no cost, results from the evolution of the tools developed and applied since 2005 by UMIC for the WCAG1.0. In fact, it builds up on the accessibility evaluation tool eXaminator (text in Portuguese) which was developed by UMIC for the WCAG1.0 and is freely available at no charge since December 2005.

On the 3th December 2010, at the OECD in Paris, Portugal was elected as one of the Vice-Chairs of the WPIE - Working Party on Information Economy, beginning on the 1st January 2011, through the election of the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) Head of International Affairs, Ana Cristina Neves, for Vice Chair of WPIE. The WPIE is one of four specialized Working Parties within the OECD Committee ICCP – Information, Computer and Communications Policy, of which the President of UMIC, Luis Magalhães, is Vice-Chair since the beginning of 2009.

On the 25-26 November 2010, the 1st Luso-Brazilian Conference on Open Access, jointly organized by the Documentation Services of the University of Minho, the Foundation for National Scientific Computing (FCCN) and the Brazilian Institute of Information on Science and Technology (IBICT).

This conference takes place following the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Ministers of Science and Technology of Portugal and Brazil in October 2009 (see Signing of Protocols on Cooperation in Science, Technology and Information Society between Portugal and Brazil), and giving continuation to the Conferences on Free Access to Knowledge, organized by the University of Minho in 2005, 2006, 2008 (see 3rd Conference on Free Access to Knowledge) and 2009 (see 4th Conference on Free Access to Knowledge), the last two under the project Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal (RCAAP) of the initiative and with funding of the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), and co-funded by EU funds of the Knowledge Society Operational Programme (see Open Access Repositories).

The Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal (RCAAP), of the initiative and with funding of the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), and co-funded by EU funds of the Knowledge Society Operational Programme (see Open Access Repositories), participated through Eloy Rodrigues, director of the Documentation Services of the University of Minho, in the Berlin Open Access Conference 8, held on 25-27 October 2010, in Beijing, China.

On the 12th October 2010, at the Portuguese Catholic University in Lisbon, it will be held the Forum for the Information Society – Digital Economy, jointly organized by ACEPI – Association Electronic Commerce and Interactive Advertising and the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) (see the Forum agenda (text in Portuguese) with links to presentations) as part of the Portugal |Internet Week’10 (text in Portuguese).

The purpose of this Forum is to discuss some of the main aspects of the Digital Economy, in the context of the Digital Agenda for Europe 2010-2020, launched on the 19th May 2010 by the European Commission Communication "A Digital Agenda for Europe" as the first flagship initiative of the Europe 2020 Strategy for Growth and Employment adopted by the European Council (text in Portuguese) on the 17th of June 2010 (see also European Council Sets Key Objectives of Europe 2020 Strategy for Employment and Growth (text in Portuguese) in the 26th of March 2010), and supported by the Council of EU on Transport, Telecommunications and Energy (text in Portuguese) of the 31st May 2010.

On 15-16 July 2010, the 1st Brazil-Portugal International Cooperation in Nanotechnology Workshop was held at the CBPF – Brazilian Center for Physics Research of the Ministry of Science and Technology, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, within the Protocol between the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Portuguese Republic and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Federative Republic of Brazil in Nanotechnology (text in Portuguese). This protocol was signed by Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education of Portugal, José Mariano Gago, and the Minister of Science and Technology of Brazil, Sergio Rezende, in a ceremony held at the Grémio Literário, Lisbon, on 10th October 2009, when they signed four cooperation agreements in areas of science, technology, innovation and information society (see Signing of Protocols on Cooperation in Science, Technology and Information Society between Portugal and Brazil).

As mentioned in the news item Science 2010 – Meeting Science in Portugal : Topics Related to the Internet of the Future, on the 4 and 7 July 2010 the 4th Meeting with Science will take place at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, in Junqueira, Lisbon. The sessions outlined in the SCIENCE 2010 Meeting Programme (text in Portuguese) will be webcast in audio and video in real time through FCCN – the Foundation for National Scientific Computation , and will be archived for hearing/viewing at any time. This Meeting brings together scientific institutions and companies to discuss some of the most important areas of scientific activity in Portugal, as well as scientific and technological advances in the following areas:

The 4th Meeting with the Scientific Community in Portugal: Ciência 2010, organized by the Council of Associated Laboratories in collaboration with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, takes place on 4 and 7 July 2010 at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, Junqueira, Lisbon. The opening session begins on Sunday, 4 July at 16:00.

The sessions given at the SCIENCE 2010 Meeting Programme (text in Portuguese) are to be transmitted in real–time video and audio over the Internet (webcast) through FCCN - The Foundation for National Scientific Computation and will be archived for hearing/viewing at any time.

On July 8, 2010, from 9:00 to 17:30, the Forum on the Information Society – Internet Governance took place at ISCTE-IUL, Edifício II, Auditório B203, Av. das Forças Armadas, Lisboa, (see the Forum program with links to presentations). This Forum is open to all interested participants.

The purpose of this forum, organized back-to-back with the public session of the World Internet Project (July 7, also at ISCTE-IUL, Edifício II, Auditório B203) by the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) in collaboration with the Foundation for National Scientific Computing (FCCN) and the Lisbon Internet and Networks Institute (LINI), was to discuss some of the main aspects of Internet Governance.

According to the European Commission report “Europe's Digital Competitiveness Report” for 2009, which was published on 17 May 2010, Portugal continues to make progress in development of the Information Society, particularly in eBusiness, eCommerce and eGovernment for enterprises, judging by the 13 indicators examined for these areas.

Portugal’s figures for 4 of the 6 eBusiness indicators are significantly above the EU average, are exactly on the average in one and even put Portugal second in the entire EU in one of the indicators.

On the 15th June 2010, the 1st Brainstorm on Smart Energy (micro site) was held at the Scientific and Cultural Centre of Macau, Lisbon, organized jointly by the Carnegie Mellon – Portugal Program, the MIT – Portugal Program, and the projects INOVGRID and MOBI.E. The meeting was co-chaired by Marija Ilic, Carnegie Mellon University, and Luis Magalhães, President of the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), had as Program Chair of the brainstorms, Inês Lima Azevedo (Carnegie Mellon University), as local organizers António Vidigal (EDP Innovation) and Luis Henriques (EDP Innovation), had the support of coordination of the Directors of the Carnegie Mellon – Portugal Program, José Moura (Carnegie Mellon University) and John Barros (IT / FEUP), and the Director of the MIT – Portugal Program, Paulo Ferrão (ISR Lisbon / IN + / IST).

The 1st Regional Meeting of the Internet Spaces Network was held in the Auditorium of the Municipal Library of Palmela on 9 June 2010. It was targeted at the monitors and all those responsible for the 51 Internet Spaces in the Setúbal District. Organized by The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), in collaboration with the Palmela Municipal Council, more than 50 people attended the meeting, with 27 Internet Spaces represented (text in Portuguese) from 11 of the 13 Municipalities in the Setúbal District (see Meeting Programme - text in Portuguese).

The 13th meeting of the UN’s CSTD – Commission on Science and Technology for Development took place from 17 to 21 May 2010 at the Palace of the Nations of the UNO – United Nations Organisation, in Geneva.

The CSTD examined the following topics at its 13th meeting:

• Evaluation of progress in achieving and following up on the results of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) at the regional and international level, which include the Internet Governance Forum (IGF);
• Improvements and innovations in funding mechanisms, chiefly as regards Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for development;
• New and Emerging technologies, in particular renewable energy for development;
• Gender, science and technology, as a contribution to achieving internationally-agreed goals on gender equality and women’s involvement;
• Evaluation reports on Ghana and Lesotho’s Science, Technology and Innovation policies.

On May 10, 2010, at the Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre, Rua da Junqueira 30, Lisbon, between 9:00 and 17:45, the Forum for the Information Society – Internet of the Future will take place (see Forum Program (in Portuguese)). The Forum is open to all interested parties.

The main objective of this Forum, organized by the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) with the support of Profs. Joao de Barros (Carnegie Mellon – Portugal Program, IT and FEUP) and Rui Aguiar (IT, U. Aveiro), is to get together expertise in strategic areas for the development of Future Internet, a subject on which there has been since 2006 a special national support, in particular within the international partnership programs of Portugal with some of the world leading institutions but also within other programs, to discuss the opportunities opening up in Future Internet technologies, applications and services.

The 3rd “Development Days” (site in Portuguese), an initiative of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, sponsored by IPAD – Portuguese Development Support Institute, IP, were held on 21-22 April 2010 in the Pavilhão do Rio at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, Junqueira. As part of the programme, the “Knowledge, Empowerment and Technology Transfer” Conference (text in Portuguese) was held on 22 April, from 3pm to 5pm for all interested parties in the Pavilion. It was organised by The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, in partnership with IPAD. This Conference focussed on different aspect of Portuguese development cooperation in the fields of science, technology and higher education knowledge, empowerment and technology transfer.

The 4th Meeting on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and ICT was held on 3-4 November 2009, at the Centro de Congressos at FIL – Lisbon Industrial Trade Fair in the Parque das Nações. The meeting was dedicated to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Innovation and Knowledge.  This meeting is part of the initiatives involving public bodies, enterprises and civil society to prepare contributions for the Iberia - Latin America Heads of State and Government Summit (site in Portuguese). It was jointly organised by The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC)  and AHCIET –  Hispanic-American Association of Research Centers & Telecom Enterprises, a private not-for-profit organisation set up by more than 50 telecommunications operators and enterprises.

Some 100 specialists from 17 Iberian and Latin American countries discussed cooperation in Future of the Internet knowledge and innovation fields.

The meeting’s objective is to analyse policies stimulating ICT innovation and knowledge, involving the public and private sectors: public administrations, international organisations, universities, scientific institutions, enterprises and non-governmental organisations active in the ICT area.

On 20-21 October 2009, in Luanda, Angola, took place the 1st National Conference on Science and Technology of Angola, organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Angola, whose Organizing Committee and Scientific Sub-Committee were chaired by Dr. Domingos da Silva Neto, National Director for Scientific Research, and whose secretariat was coordinated by Dr. Julius Campos de Almeida, Director of the Office of the Minister of Science and Technology.

The Conference had the motto: "The role of science and technology in the socioeconomic and sustainable development of Angola". It was opened by the Minister of Science and Technology, Professor Maria Cândida Pereira Teixeira, and featured five panel sessions dedicated to:

The Portuguese Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, José Mariano Gago, and the Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology, Sérgio Rezende, signed five cooperation agreements on science, technology, innovation and the information society at the Grémio Literário Literary Club on 10 October 2010:

• Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Portuguese Republic and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Federal Republic of Brazil on strengthening the Portuguese language in the Information Society through open/free access scientific repositories, provision of resources for computer processing of the Portuguese language, assessment of Web content in Portuguese and Web archiving (text in Portuguese);
• Agreement between the Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Portuguese Republic and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Federal Republic of Brazil on Distributed GRID Computing (text in Portuguese);
• Agreement between the Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Portuguese Republic and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Federal Republic of Brazil on nanotechnology (text in Portuguese);
• Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Portuguese Republic and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Federal Republic of Brazil on research support material in Social and Human Sciences in the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP) (text in Portuguese);
• Agreement between the Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Portuguese Republic and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Federal Republic of Brazil on joint participation in EUREKA and IBEROEKA projects (text in Portuguese);

On August 29, 2009, the Ministers CPLP – Community of Portuguese Language Countries responsible for science and technology and for higher education met in Lisbon.

Portugal has the Presidency of the CPLP this year and prepared an agenda which includes the discussion of a Portuguese proposal to create a, in a completely innovative approach, a UNESCO Centre for advanced training in science within the institutions of the CPL (text of the declaration in Portuguese) , combining the high-level scientific training, namely through PhD programs, with the training for the social responsibility of scientists, the public communication of science, and integration in international networks and research programs, with the objective of facilitating the scientific development of the countries of origin and of combating the brain drain. Portugal ensures the launching and the early operation of this new center of distributed advanced scientific training, in cooperation with UNESCO and in combination with other CPLP countries.

On the 27th of July 2009, in presence of the Prime Minister, José Sócrates, it was organized a ceremony to commemorate the delivery to students, professors and trainees of 1 million laptops by the programs e.escola, e.professor, e.oportunidades and e.escolinha, just two years after the first two programs were initiated in June 2007 and a year after the launching of the e.escolinha program.

The programs e.escola, e.professor and e.oportunidades were created to facilitate the purchase of laptop computers with mobile broadband connections, respectively to 5th to 12th grade students, teachers of primary and secondary schools, and trainees in the New Opportunities Program with acquisition costs of 150 euros and a monthly subscription of mobile broadband access for 15 euros, with more favorable conditions applying to students who receive social support. The program e.escolinha has the objective of facilitating the purchase of Magalhães Computers by primary school students, the Portuguese Low Cost Computer Designed for Students of the 1st to 4th grades.

University of Madeira, Madeira Technopole and Carnegie Mellon University sign, on July 23, 2009, a protocol for creating a new private R&D  institute in the area of Information and Communication Technologies, Madeira – Interactive Technologies Institute (Madeira - ITI), in a ceremony in the presence of the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, José Mariano Gago, and the Secretary of State of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor. The creation of this institute had been proposed at the 5th meeting of the Board of Directors of the Carnegie Mellon – Portugal Program, chaired by Luis Magalhães, President of the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) and held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, on the 27th and 28th of May 2009.

Less than four years after Portugal and Spain have signed an agreement to create this R&D laboratory, in November 2005, the building of the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory was officially inaugurated on July 17, 2009. This laboratory will be the 1st in the world with an international legal status with States as members which is specially dedicated to nanotechnology, thus offering the best conditions for the most talented researchers from around the world to develop top research in nanotechnology. It is also the 1st international laboratory in the Iberian Peninsula in any area of research, leading to Portugal and Spain to enter the restricted group of countries that have such research international organizations in their territory.

According to the Report on Dematerialization and the Use of ICT, Lisbon 16-17 March 2009, of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice Council of Europe (CoE), published in Strasbourg on June 11, 2009, Portugal is in the top position of the 47 European countries that are members of the CoE in dematerialization and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Justice. 

The report states that several projects initiated since 2005 have led to very positive results, namely: by the end of February 2009, the enterprises created by the Enterprise on the Spot program reached more more than 67,900 companies and this system is used for about 70% of all enterprises being created in Portugal, 4,373 enterprises were created completely through the Internet (with the system developed by the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) and in operation since June 2006, see The Enterprise’s Portal which was also developed by UMIC and is in operation since June 2006), more than 1,400 associations were created completely through the Internet, more than 31,260 acts of Commercial Registry were done online, more than 1 million permanent certificates were issued via the Internet, about 1.5 million acts of enterprises were published in the Internet instead of the III series of the Portugal Official Journal (Diário da República), as it was the case before. Since it was created in December 2006 until the end of January 2009, the service providing permanent certificates to enterprises on the Internet, issued more than 1 million permanent certificates. By the end of 2008, more than 792,000 Simplified Business Information (IES) declarations were reported through the Internet in a single form instead of the paper forms that previously required to be submitted annually to four different public organizations (Fiscal Administration, Commercial Registry, National Statistics Institute, Bank of Portugal). 

Portugal was the EU country which showed the largest growth in R&D expenditure in terms of GDP from 2005 to 2007, reaching 1.18% of GDP when in 2005 it was just 0.81% of GDP. Portugal is now close to Spain (1.22%) and Ireland (1.31%), and has passed Hungary (0.97%), Italy (1.09%) and Estonia (1.14%).

R&D expenditure in terms of GDP more than doubled from to 2005 to 2007, reaching 0.61% of GDP when in 2005 it was just 0.29% of GDP. For the first time R&D expenditure in companies was greater than the amount recorded for other institutions. The number of companies with R&D activities showed unparalleled growth, rising from around 930 in 2005 to more than 1,500 in 2007.

There was a large increase in the number of researchers in the active population, rising from 3.8‰ in 2005 to 5.0‰ in 2007, with the number of researchers equivalent to full time posts doubling in the last ten years (from around 14 thousand in 1997 to around 28 thousand in 2007). The number of researchers in the active population is now close to the EU27 average (5.6‰), although this is still lower that the OCDE average (7.0‰).

The number of researchers in companies more than doubled from 2005 to 2007, moving from around 4 thousand to 8.6 thousand, and was accompanied by an increase in the number of researchers which companies stated as having PhDs  (around 360 in 2007).

The Information and Communication Technology Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) aims to speed up sustainable development in a competitive, innovative and inclusive information society. It is one of the three specific programmes belonging to the EU's Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.

The first call for ICT PSP proposals will run from 25th May to 23rd October 2007.

The budget for the ICT PSP 2007 Working Programme will be 65.5 M€ and will focus on the following themes:

Calls for proposals have been launched for several of the Information and Communication Technologies topic objectives. More information can be found at CORDIS FP7.

Challenge 1: Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructures

The network of the future, Service and software architectures, infrastructures and engineering, ICT in support of the networked enterprise, Secure, dependable and trusted infrastructures, Networked media;