1. 160+ participants representing the business community, public sector and utilities, local authorities and the civil society, were present. List of registered participants can be found in Annex 2.

2.  Although this event took place just 15 days before very crucial municipal elections, the Minister for Communications and Works participated and made quite a substantial opening address to the conference. He thanked DG INFSO for visiting member states, he pointed on the economic benefits of ICT and he announced the new Digital Strategy for Cyprus: he mentioned how ICT gives a new, digital dimension to traditional practices and said that this new strategy will help Cyprus endorse more quickly the benefits of the digital era.

3. The audience participated actively with questions that were quite relevant and at times the discussion was heated, for example during the discussion on ICT structural funds planning.

4. The event was covered by the press both before and after. Follow-up action for further dissemination was taken.

The Head of the Department of Electronic Communications of the Ministry of Communications and Works presented the new Digital Strategy for Cyprus. The strategy follows the structure of the DAE and includes targets in line with the DAE. According to the DAE Scoreboard, Cyprus doesn't score well in most of the targets set. The Strategy aims at lifting this disadvantage until 2020.

Ioannis Malekos (HoU INFSO) explained the DAE and presented its progress. He further emphasized the points that relevant are to Cyprus and encouraged the efforts of Cyprus to advance the issues of the Digital Agenda.

During the coffee brake, two promotional videos for 112 were shown to participants. These presentations were followed by the following 3 workshops according to the programme:

a) Digital entrepreneurship (EU funding)

b) Green ICT

c) e-Skills

 All presentations can be found on the GL Cyprus event page.

Bilateral meetings:

1) A meeting of INFSO officials held with Ministry officials and DG REGIO officials centred on enabling the Ministry to better manage Structural Funds for ICT, especially during the upcoming period (2014-2020). Technical and managerial aspects were analysed, as well as what types of action are eligible. DG REGIO officials gave an overview of various options. It was decided to analyse and follow a similar successful case and the case of Estonia was chosen. EC officials will establish contact between Cypriot and Estonian officials.

 2) A meeting of INFSO officials held with 112 stakeholders centred on addressing their concerns with promoting the use of 112, as Cyprus is among the member states with minimal use of this service. The meeting was structured in two parts: The 1st part of the meeting was devoted to the information and awareness issues and the second to the amendments to the Universal Service Directive and the subsequent reinforced obligations of the MS.

During the 1st part of the meeting, the stakeholders were informed of the results of the recent Eurobarometer and the recent low performance of Cyprus. The meeting provided the Cypriot authorities with the occasion to inform the Commission of the measures taken during the previous years in order to inform and raise public awareness regarding the existence and the utility of the European Emergency Number 112 and to explore the reasons for its limited success. Recognizing the limited scale of last year’s campaign and the lack of coordination, the Ministry of Communications has recently undertook to coordinate all relevant stakeholders and relaunch the promotional campaign. Private stakeholders affirmed their will to participate in this campaign and to help the public authorities inform the public and raise awareness.

The second part of the meeting was dedicated to the reinforced obligations imposed on Member States by the 2009 Reform Package regarding the European Emergency Number 112. Cyprus has failed to date to send to the Commission its response to the COCOM 11-08 questionnaire but affirmed that the answer will shortly be submitted. The discussion focused on caller location information (availability, criteria for caller location, system used (Push-Pull), nomadic VoIP), equivalent access by disabled users and equivalent choice of disabled users. The OCECPR informed the participants that secondary legislation necessary for the implementation of the revised article 26 of the USD will be consulted publicly with the stakeholders after the enactment of the law transposing the reform package (beginning of 2012).

The Ministry affirmed its determination to coordinate all competent authorities and relevant stakeholders in order to fully implement the provisions related to the operation and the promotion of the European Emergency Number. For this reason, it was agreed that further meetings will be organized between the Authorities and the Stakeholders.


Overview of the comments/questions by stakeholders

- ICT policies until today do not seem to have been supported strongly enough by political authorities. This is partly due to a prevailing mentality in the country, evident in the large amount of paper documents circulating among government services.

- A suggestion to create a Knowledge Park in Cyprus was not fully understood by decision-makers, as it was thought to be mainly a real-estate project. Yet, if it were to be realised, this could greatly contribute to more research projects leading to positive market results.

- The Department of Electronic Communications claim they lack resources. They suggest a communication campaign would help them get more visibility and motivate more stakeholders to coordinate with them. They could be interested in hosting a Europe Direct Centre that would serve as their communications hub.

- EC assistance would be useful for setting up e-government in Cyprus.

- There is interest to know more about CEF, how the funds will be distributed, what would government agencies' role be in this process.

- Some beneficiaries, who participate in EU-funded research projects, mentioned they had never heard of the other EU funding opportunities (Structural Funds, CIP) and thanked the Commission for providing this information.

- EC officials explained the differences between FP7, CIP and Structural Funds.

- Is there any provision to enhance connectivity of Cyprus to the net ("trunk")? This should be a priority for national and EU authorities, as it seriously hampers Cypriot productivity and efforts to achieve ultra-fast internet.

- Request from several participants to the Planning Bureau of Cyprus: include us in the planning and consultation for the management of structural funds (the Planning Bureau responded positively).

- The Cyprus Computer Society and the Cyprus IT Enterprises Association complained that there are not many public-private partnerships in Cyprus.

- A software company representative commented on how they decided to abstain from EU research calls, as their experience was negative.

- Several participants were not aware of the EC public consultations on access to telecoms networks (IP/11/1147) which were open at the time of the event.

After the presentation from the Cyprus Electricity Authority (CEA) on Smart Meters there were many questions and a vivid discussion on the following issues:

- Is there an electromagnetic field danger from smart meters? The CEA responded that smart meters will either use mobile data services or the electricity cables to transmit/receive and are therefore not creating any additional network that could endanger citizens.

- Are the smart meters that will be used in Cyprus bi-directional? Will the consumer be able to sell back electricity? The CEA gave a positive answer saying that they envisage a wide use of private photovoltaic solutions that would both increase electricity production by renewable sources and mitigate the risk of central power plant failure (ref. the recent accident that neutralised the biggest power plant on the island creating a big problem in electricity production).

- Will the smart meters system in Cyprus be an open system? Will they be able to run third party applications? The CEA answered that the system will be open and that third parties should be able to provide applications but also installation and maintenance services.

- Who will install and maintain smart meters in Cyprus? See above.

- Is ICT electrical efficiency mandatory? The answer given was negative. ICT electrical efficiency is suggested but it is up to the authority that issues a Call for Tender to include specifications that will point to this direction.

Next Steps

- GL team prepared the post-event blog post, twitts and Facebook posts (the latter one meant both for the DAE page and for the REP page).

- During the Conference, several participants asked for cooperation with the Cyprus Structural Funds managing authority, the "Planning Bureau". More specifically, they asked to be included in the planning and consultation for the management of structural funds. The Planning Bureau responded positively.

- An e-mail was sent to all speakers with the link to the GL website, where all presentations have been uploaded. In the email, they are encouraged to disseminate this information to their contacts through e-mail and the social media, to potentially increase visibility of the conference.

- An email was sent to registered participants thanking them for their participation and informing them of the GL event page where they can find the presentations. They were also informed on options to be informed of DG INFSO activities, namely inscription to Newsroom updates and Digital Agenda social media profiles.

- GL team brought together officials of the Department of Electronic Communications of the Ministry of Communications and Works with the European Office of Cyprus, a body that serves as the Cyprus governments communication hub for EU-related (and, more specifically, EU-funding-related) issues. Ministry officials were encouraged to disseminate this information to their contacts in Cyprus, so as to increase awareness of EU funding opportunities in Cyprus.

- GL team provided the European Office of Cyprus with a text and photos to be included in their newsletter.

- Several participants were not aware of the EC public consultations on access to telecoms networks (IP/11/1147) which were open at the time of the event. Hence an e-mail was sent to participants to introduce them to DG INFSO's Newsroom service that informs subscribers of DG's activities (public consultations, funding opportunities, major policy activities, Commissioner activities etc.)

- EC officials will establish contact between Cypriot and Estonian officials.