IST Programme Key Action II - Workprogramme 2000

A total of 11 Action Lines have been identified for Calls for Proposals in 2000. They form a coherent set of RTD, take-up, support and socio-economic analysis activities. Action Line Descriptions II.1 RTD Spanning Key Action II A number of critical challenges and issues associated with the research, validation, socio-economic analysis and adoption of novel solutions and practices for eWork and eBusiness are best approached when considered across the entire Key Action. This includes the research and validation of novel knowledge management functionalities and novel mobile and/or ubiquitous solutions to empower people and organisations. It also includes activities aimed at promoting early validation and exploitation of novel solutions as well as their early and broad deployment. Key Action II seeks to add further value to its activities through a number of support measures such as clusters of projects, training, international co-operation, dissemination actions and interoperability efforts aimed at creating synergy and maximising impact. IST 2000 - II.1.1 New perspectives for work and business Objectives: To develop a better understanding of the social, economic, industrial and environmental implications of novel technologies for work and business and, in the process, provide guidance to other activities in this Key Action as well as to related legal and policy activities. This work is expected to be carried out through a combination of accompanying measures, R&D and demonstrations. Focus: Improve understanding of the organisational, industrial, economic, legal, policy and social challenges faced by European enterprises as they strive to leverage novel IST solutions & practices for work & business and compete in the global digital economy. Development of new econometric models to assess and predict the impact of new eCommerce solutions and practices on industrial competitiveness Improve understanding of the linkages between IST-enabled work and sustainable development in a global Information Society. Particular attention should be given to social relationships in the workplace, quality of worklife (including health and safety), changes in transport, energy and material consumption, as well as new opportunities for more efficient use of the built environment and better city planning. Definition of performance indicators for companies with large intangible asset bases and development of management instruments to evaluate possible investments in the intangible assets of an enterprise. Types of actions addressed: Accompanying measures, RTD Links with WP99: Updated version of ALII.1.1. IST 2000 - II.1.2 Knowledge management for eCommerce and eWork Objectives: To empower individuals and organisations through novel knowledge management solutions aimed at enhancing creativity, innovation, competencies, and responsiveness. Projects are expected to explore and validate novel "intelligent" knowledge management technologies, applications, methodologies and practices aimed at leveraging numerous and varied sources of often incomplete and/or ill-structured individual and corporate knowledge (e.g. knowledge about products, services, customers, suppliers, business partners as well as in-house and external expertise in all shapes and forms). This includes multidisciplinary solutions for capturing, organising, mining and, more generally, exploiting, exchanging and trading knowledge in support of both intra- and inter-organisational activities. Focus: To develop and validate highly adaptive, context-sensitive and anticipatory knowledge management functionalities capable of dynamically providing individuals (whether as workers or consumers) and organisations with timely knowledge and suggestions relevant to the tasks they are currently engaged in. The challenge is to develop practical, easy-to-use solutions that cut across multiple intra- and inter-organisational functionalities and activities, making it possible dynamically to extract and recombine knowledge across traditional functional and organisational boundaries. Proposals submitted under this Action Line are expected to develop solutions that address issues falling under one or more of the following Action Lines: II.1.3, II.2.1, II.2.2 and II.3.1. Type of Actions addressed: RTD. Links with WP99: Updated version of ALII.1.2. IST 2000 - II.1.3 Mobile and ubiquitous eCommerce and eWork Objectives: To explore and validate novel mobile and/or ubiquitous models, solutions and practices for eCommerce, eWork and "smart" organisations. Focus: Development and validation of smart, context-sensitive (e.g. time, location, or task-sensitive) solutions capable of supporting highly personalised mobile/ubiquitous eCommerce and eWork scenarios as well as "smart" organisational practices. Development and validation of environments for open, seamless and secure integration of heterogeneous mobile/ubiquitous eWork and eCommerce solutions, including wearable ones. Development of easy-to-use multi-modal interfaces for mobile/ubiquitous eWork and eCommerce. Proposals submitted under this Action Line will typically be expected to develop mobility and ubiquity functionalities that address issues falling under one or more of the following Action Lines: II.2.1, II.2.2, II.3.1 and II.4.1. Type of Actions addressed: RTD. Links with WP99: This AL can be viewed as a recombination of themes previously covered under WP99 ALII.2.1, ALII.2.2 and ALII.3.2. IST 2000 - II.1.4 Early exploitation and adoption of eCommerce and eWork solutions and practices Objectives: The objective is to promote early exploitation and adoption of novel solutions and practices for eCommerce, eWork and "Smart" Organisations. This is done by supporting activities aimed at customising, integrating, validating and benchmarking novel technologies, architectures, business processes and organisational practices for eCommerce , eWork and "Smart" Organisations. Emphasis is on solutions and practices that are directly supportive of the objectives of one or more of the following Action Lines: II.1.2, II.1.3, II.2.1, II.2.2, II.3.1 and II.4.1. Focus: Trials are intended to help customise and validate promising, yet untested technologies, applications and organisational practices in realistic and/or operational contexts and, in so doing, help prepare these solutions for rapid transfer to the marketplace. Trials are intended as replicable one-off exercises. Test-beds are intended to serve as shared reusable validation, integration and/or benchmarking vehicles for multiple comparable and/or complementary solutions. Emphasis is generally on interoperability, scalability, dependability and usability. Test-beds can also be used to organise competitions. Types of Actions addressed: Trials and Demonstrations. Links with WP99: This AL replaces the formal take-up measures on trials in KAII and introduces test-beds in KAII. IST 2000 - II.1.5 Promoting broad adoption of eCommerce & eWork in regional and sectoral settings Objectives: Promote early and broad adoption of novel solutions and practices for eCommerce, eWork and "Smart" organisations with a special emphasis on regional and sectoral customisation. This includes activities aimed at showcasing the benefits of new solutions and facilitating their deployment in SMEs. Focus: Focus is on cost-effective, high impact activities that can serve as catalysts for much broader dissemination and early adoption of novel solutions and practices. Priorities in 2000 are: Clusters aimed at coordinating "Trials" and "Best practice" activities with common needs already launched under the 5th Framework Programme, creating synergy among them and enhancing their overall visibility and impact through coordinated awareness and dissemination activities. Advanced business experiments aimed at connecting regional or sectoral communities to the global digital economy. This includes the creation of local and sectoral digital communities as well as their interconnection. Early adoption activities aimed at promoting integration of candidate Enlargement countries into the global digital economy. Types of Actions addressed: Best practice, Demonstrations, Thematic networks, non take-up accompanying measures Links with WP99: Subsumes/replaces former best practice measures. IST 2000 - II.1.6 Specific support measures Objectives: To add value to activities launched within this Key Action, help maximise their impact and create synergistic links both within the Key Action and with related activities at the regional, national, Community or international level. Focus: Measures aimed at creating synergy among RTD projects and/or take-up actions within this Key Action as well as with other related activities whether at the regional, national, Community, or international level. Strengthening Europe's skill base for the digital economy: measures aimed at identifying and disseminating new skill requirements associated with the emerging digital economy as they relate to work in this Key Action. Measures aimed at maximising the impact and visibility of work within this Key Action through broad, yet cost-effective dissemination activities. Measures aimed at building industrial consensus, promoting interoperability and standardisation in the areas of eWork, eCommerce, Enterprise Systems and Trust&Confidence, including relevant middleware. Emphasis is on cost-effective efforts aimed at bringing together key players and building early critical mass in strategic areas, in co-operation with relevant international initiatives and bodies. Measures aimed at promoting international cooperation in the areas of eWork, eCommerce, "Smart" Organisations, and Trust & Confidence with a particular emphasis on addressing cooperation with newly associated countries. Types of Actions addressed: Thematic networks, Accompanying measures (excluding take-up) Links with WP99: New action line II.2 Flexible, Mobile and Remote Working Methods and Tools Novel technologies offer the promise of freeing workers and enterprises from traditional spatial, temporal and organisational constraints that too often impede creativity, productivity, agility, learning or cooperation. They also have the potential of significantly enhancing competitiveness, workplace sustainability and quality of work-life. IST 2000 - II.2.1 Sustainable workplace design Objectives: Multidisciplinary development and validation of sustainable workplace designs incorporating emerging technologies into new workplace and teamwork concepts. These should enhance creativity and productivity; ensure safe working conditions; improve the quality of the working life and reduce the overall resource-use burden on the environment. The activities are expected to bring together ICT technology developers with office equipment designers, architects and urban planning organisations and should reflect user-centred design principles. Focus: Development of novel IST-enabled workplace designs, as well as solutions and organisational practices aimed at supporting mobility, at sharing building facilities and office space, at increasing overall agility and at promoting sustainable use of resources in the workplace. Development of novel wearable solutions and software upgradable designs aimed at significantly extending the life of workplace equipment and infrastructure and/or at substantially enhancing sustainability. Type of Actions addressed: RTD Links with WP99: This is a new version of WP99 ALII.2.1. on Workplace Design that has been refocused in complementarity to work in the "Competitive and Sustainable Growth" Programme and in the "Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development" Programme. IST 2000 - II.2.2 "Smart" organisations Objectives: To explore and validate novel technologies, applications, architectures and practices aimed at supporting the transformation of profit and non-profit entities into "smart" organisations: knowledge driven, internetworked, dynamically adaptive to new organisational forms and practices, learning as well as agile in their ability to create and exploit the opportunities offered by the digital economy. Focus: To develop novel open, interoperable solutions and platforms for flexible working in and between organisations. This includes solutions to support co-operation, flexible workflow management and co-ordinated planning across extended/virtual enterprises and associated distributed business processes. Emphasis is on easy-to-use, customisable, affordable, interoperable, extensible, evolutionary and legacy-inclusive solutions and platforms. Technical work should focus on embedding knowledge into business processes, supporting process distribution and (re)optimisation as well as mobile practices such as those made possible by wireless communication. Type of Actions addressed: RTD Links with WP99: This is an updated version of WP99 ALII.2.3 on Dynamic Networked Organisations. II.3 Management Systems for Suppliers and Consumers New technologies offer the promise of completely redefining relations between suppliers and consumers across the value chain, leading to a global digital economy where consumers and businesses can seamlessly and dynamically come together and where value constellations are assembled on the fly in response to constantly changing, highly customised market demands. IST 2000 - II.3.1 Dynamic value constellations Objectives: To explore and validate novel value creation models, technologies and solutions in the context of dynamic virtual enterprises and other market-driven value constellations, where partners dynamically come together in response to or in anticipation of new market opportunities. Focus: Novel technologies, systems, business processes and consumer-friendly solutions aimed at supporting the dynamic creation of highly-customised products and services in response to changing market demands. Novel market mediation models and solutions to support the dynamic identification and selection of value constellation partners, including contractual and value sharing arrangements. Novel technologies, systems and business processes aimed at supporting the full life-cycle management of products and services across dynamic value constellations, including conflict mediation and resolution systems as well as solutions to deal with their dissolution, product dismantling and resource recovery. Type of Actions addressed: RTD Links with WP99: This is an AL that recombines elements of WP99 ALII.3.1, ALII.3.2 and ALII.3.3 with a new focus on product and service creation across dynamic value constellations. II.4 Information and Network Security and Other Confidence Building Technologies A critical challenge in developing IST-based solutions and practices is to ensure trust and confidence at the level of both individual solutions and the infrastructures supporting these solutions. IST 2000 - II.4.1 Technology building blocks for trust and security Objectives: To develop and validate novel, scalable and interoperable technologies, mechanisms and architectures for trust and security in distributed organisations, services and underlying infrastructures. Focus: Development and validation of scalable and usable authentication infrastructures, including infrastructures with embedded electronic signature and/or bio-metric solutions. This also includes tools for lifecycle management of keys as well as interoperability of public and non-public key schemes. Development and validation of global security architectures aimed at providing an optimised balance between hardware and software while leveraging tamper-proof equipment, such as smart cards, and auditable protocols with strong non-repudiation properties. Development and validation of protocols and transactional models in support of emerging business organisations, processes and practices. Special emphasis is placed on electronic payments, irrespective of value, and on trustful rights management. Definition of novel standards and meta-languages to characterise, measure, and assess quality of service for trust and security management. Building technologies to empower users to consciously and effectively manage and negotiate their personal intellectual property rights and assets. Building technologies to empower users to consciously and effectively manage their "personal rights" (i.e. privacy, confidentiality, etc.). This includes technologies that enable anonymous or pseudonymous access to information society applications and services, for example by minimising the generation of personal data. Develop and validate novel technologies and systems to prevent and fight abuses perpetrated via IST infrastructures and platforms with a particular emphasis on fraudulent and criminal activities. Type of Actions addressed: RTD Links with WP99: Recombines and builds on elements of WP99 ALs II.4.1, II.4.2 and II.4.3 reflecting the importance of Trust and Confidence issues. IST 2000 - II.4.2 Large-scale trust and confidence Objectives: To scale-up, integrate, validate and demonstrate trust and confidence technologies and architectures in the context of advanced large-scale scenarios for business and everyday life. This work will largely be carried out through trials, integrated test-beds and combined RTD and demonstrations Focus: Generic solutions that emphasise large-scale interoperability and are capable of supporting a broad array of transactions (e.g. e-purses and e-money), applications and processes. Development of solutions that reconcile new eCommerce models and processes with security requirements, paying particular attention to the needs of SMEs and consumers Validation should generally include assessing legal implications of proposed solutions, especially in the context of solutions aimed at empowering users to consciously and effectively manage their personal "rights and assets". Types of Actions addressed: RTD, Trials and Best practice Links with WP99: Combines elements of WP99 ALs II.4.1, II.4.2 and II.4.3 reflecting the importance of Trust and Confidence issues.