The Austrian Federal Chancellery organised a mini-conference with the participants of the "Beirat fuer Informationsgesellschaft" (advisory board for the information society) that advises the Chancellery on the information society policy issues at national level. The meeting focused on three issues high on the Austrian national digital policy agenda: digital inclusion, broadband, research and innovation.

Country team leader Detlef Eckert of the European Commission gave an introductory presentation on the EC's takes on the three topics for the event, underlining the crucial importance of ICT policies to generate growth with targeted action.

GlobYo (Globalise Yourself), a team of innovative young people who participated in the entrepreneurship workshop at the Digital Agenda Assembly 2011, presented their business idea for facilitiating mobility of Europeans across different countries by providing a techncial content management system that allows to move around. Main hindrances to Europeans not being more mobile are language barriers and a different culture of failure than e.g. in the United States. Issues coming up in this context were also collective rights management in Europe, which needed to be brought into the digital age and the need to have a more coherent data protection framework in Europe. The Commission mentioned that proposals on Collective Rights Management and on Data Protection were in the pipeline for early 2012.

eInclusion

The session on eInclusion gave an impression of the many eInclusion activities going on in Austria. The Austrian Ministry for Education and Culture presented the e-fit 21 campaign that aims at improving digital literacy and e-skills at all levels of education and vocational training to make Austrians fit for the digital age and to close the digital divide.

The Ministry for Labour, social affairs and Consumer Protection (BMASK) presented legal measures on equal treatment of handicapped people and announced a national action plan for the near future. Austria invests around 1.9 m€ for projects in this area. Other initiatives aim at e.g. increasing the ICT awareness of teachers.

The Federal Office for Positive Rating of Computer and Console Games at the Federal Ministry of Economics, Family and Youth (BUPP) showed how to educate children in the use of technologies by using a playful approach. Also the national Safer Internet initiative was presented. For the future of this specific programme in the multi-annual financial framework, participants underlined that it was essential to have a long-term financing perspective and said that more research and solid data was needed to see how to develop actitivites further.

The SeniorKom initative aims at familiarising the older generation with the internet by offering a number of possibilities for online activities. SeniorKom was one of the finalists of the 2008 EU inclusion award in the category ageing well.

The mobile operator A1 also presented the A1 Campus, its initiative for internet for all that provides targeted training and workshops for children, parents, teachers and elderly to use the internet responsibly.

Broadband

The Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) presented the overall situation for broadband development in Austria, confirming that Austria has committed to implementing the broadband targets set out in the Digital Agenda, i.e. th provide 25 Mbps to all Austrians by 2013 by using cohesion funds, EU recovery funds, EARDF money, and through a specific legal instrument, the regulation on Breitband Austria zwanzigdreizehn to develop infrastructures in regions with market failure. Austria has also announced to aim for superfast internet access for all Austrians by 2015, using a mix of financing and implementation of the relevant EU regulatory framework. BMVIT confirmed that the Connecting Europe Facility was a very interesting proposal for developing infrastructures further and that they support the telecoms part of it but wondered about regions with market failure.

The National Regulatory Authority RTR presented the legal and regulatory framework for broadband deployment which has the role to facilitate but not to prescribe technological solutions. In Q1 2011 Austria had an equal percentage of mobile and fixed broadband connections. BMVIT pointed out that regulatory holidays to promote high-speed broadband were not considered successful.

The operators Telekom Austria and T-Mobile also presented their take on the situation and their deployment plans, underlining that a future fixed and mobile infrastructure was needed to keep up Austria as a competitive location.

The Commission clarified that the Connecting Europe Facility was not a cohesion instrument, but an instrument to finance both broadband infrastructure and cross-border digital services infrastructures. The mix of projects and the award criteria still need to be worked out in detail and the Commission invited the participants to start a reflection on this.

Research and Innovation

The Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) presented the overall position of Austria in research and innovation, the actors and programmes involved and the strategy adopted in 2011 to move Austria into the top group of European countries regarding research performance. Austria is currently at R&D at 2.67% of GDP, in fourth place among the 27 Member States.

Presentations by Austrian research organisations and companies involved in ENIAC and ARTEMIS, by the Photonik Austria Platform, Manufuture, on the management of large scale data and by the Austian Science Fund FWF gave illustrations of the many interesting research activities on the ground.
On ARTEMIS and ENIAC, comments were that these rather new endeavours that in the early stages suffer from childhood diseases and could take on more from the established good practice by the Commission. The main part discussion focused on the Horizon 2020 proposal by the Commission on how to organise and finance RDI in the next multiannual financial framework 2014-2020. The Commission remarked that Horizon 2020 is set up differently than P7, as there will be no specific ICT programme but ICT will have to be accentuated in the overall challenges for future research. Internal governance structures how to best organise research activities will have to be worked out both at European and national levels.

Going Really Local – meetings with companies and research institutions

Visits to Austria Microsystems, Joanneum Research and Guger Technologies to understand the fields of activity of these entities and to discuss their experiences in participating in EU research projects.

austriamicrosystems is a global leader in the design and manufacture of high performance analog integrated circuits, developing and produce]ing industry-leading analog semiconductors, including high performance standard products and customized solutions. It focuses on power management, sensors & sensor interfaces and mobile infotainment. They have been participating into EU research projects since Framework Programmes 4 and 5, but today participation only if the a project adds value to optimising their internal value chain. Their suggestion was that market relevance of proposals should be more important.

Joanneum research presented some of the EU projects they are involved in the areas of eLearning, disaster warning and management, immersive media, applications for social inclusion/migrants and space technologies and acoustics. The discussion on Horizon 2020 focused on how to define the ICT part in the new proposals, where Joanneum Research suggested that the strategic importance of the ICT component in a specific project should be determining how to address a project.

Guger Technologies, winners of the 2007 European IST prize, developed the first commercially available brain-computer interface (BCI) system in 1999 and is now one of three companies worldwide, with sales more than 60 countries. gtec participates currently in 12 EU research projects, which are appreciated for the networking effect, the possibility of technological development and customer acquisition. However, in BCI reserarch the US are leading, but not part of EU projects, so there is a need to cooperate with the US. Main problems of EU projects is the often unclear situation of IPR which is not well addressed in consortia contracts. gtec consequently pulls out of research projects when they are close to the market to protect their own contributions. The EU should support the fast and efficient set up of consortia contracts.