Please note that the
following information has been provided by
Acro Logic
for the purpose of assisting with the development of proposals
for the Knowledge Network.
Treat this information as confidential and
keep these proposals within the Knowledge Network group.
This information does not necessarily represent the official
views of the group.
Services can be delivered to focus on one, or more, "themes" across a:
project or programme
trial or demonstration
specific product / service development and evaluation activity.
The broad themes are entitled: Knowledge Management; Virtuality (e.g. tele-working); Public Knowledge; and Tools. These themes cover the major aspects of information and communication technologies from the human perspective.
The strategic aims include:
managing the information overload challenge of modern competitive living and working
identifying opportunities for effective and efficient working practices
finding effective solutions for access to knowledge whilst protecting the need for privacy; and (consequently)
improving the quality of life.
The diagram below outlines how these objectives and services fit together to give a comprehensive and integrated range of multi-disciplinary and multi-sector research, development and evaluation services. You can choose to participate in as much as you like.
Key organisations involved in:
the development and deployment of information, communication and knowledge based systems
using information, communication and knowledge based applications
setting standards for knowledge management
determining social, economic, environmental, legal and governmental visions, policies and guidelines.
These include leading and innovative IT development companies (and standards bodies); providers of information such as the media and Internet service companies; end users of information (advantaged and not so advantaged); researchers and academics; educational institutions; providers of primary and secondary health care; lawyers; and local, regional, national and European government bodies.
The EU's Fifth Framework or IST Programme presents significant opportunities for the Knowledge Network and our clients. We can develop proposals for our own (demonstration) projects and/or collaborate with others.
The IST Programme makes reference to the use of "themes" that may consider a specific aspect across a range of projects. For example, we can provide the following services.
Themes
|
Knowledge Network Activities |
Objectives of
the IST Programme
|
| Knowledge Management | Research and identify the issues
associated with managing and acquiring knowledge. Focus on particular sectors and users and their challenges and opportunities (e.g. education). Provide recommendations for effective knowledge management models, systems, policies and procedures (best practice). |
Management and integration of
workflow... An important research dimension will be new socio-economic and technological models for representing information, knowledge and know-how. The work will address both applications-oriented research, focusing on publishing, audiovisual, culture and education and training and generic research in language and content technologies for all applications areas, and will include validation, take-up, concertation and standards. Mastering information: rich descriptive models of digital information content, covering all media types and supporting all human senses, in addition to spatial and temporal aspects. Information management systems: new organisation and management methods for multimedia information sources: work will explore advanced techniques for data warehousing integrating access control mechanisms, quality assurance, integrity control and technical protection of multimedia "fragments"; information categorisation, labelling and filtering enabling selective information retrieval and filtering (including for the control of illegal and harmful content). Methods and tools for intelligence and knowledge sharing. Information management methods. Generic Research and Development of Technologies ... knowledge technologies (covering technologies for the representation, creation and handling of knowledge) ... |
| Virtuality | Determine the scope, participants
and objectives of our virtual applications. Procure the virtual tool set. Establish standards, procedures, skills and best practice. |
Flexible, mobile and remote working
methods and tools. Work will focus on enabling, validating and demonstrating competitive, flexible and human-centred work methods and organisation, including in administrations and non-profit organisations, by means of an integrated approach to the combination of business process and work organisation, human resource management, and information society technologies, informed by socio-economic and legal requirements analysis and considerations of the global context and actual business practice. It will address the needs of workers, enterprises and consumers alike. Best-practice pilots and scaleable demonstrations, together with dissemination actions to stimulate broad experimentation and adoption will be major features of the work. Work methods: telework and networked cooperative working; mobile working; simulation- and virtual-reality-based methods, for both individual and collaborative working; entrepreneurship and portfolio working; organisation: integrating new or re-engineered work methods and structures in all sectors, including administrations, taking into account existing practices; agile, extended, virtual enterprises and networks of individuals ... organisational methodologies, including benchmarking and scenario planning; transformation methods and change and risk management... |
| Public Knowledge | Conduct research (on existing policies, opinions, issues,
working and educational practices, etc.). Collaborate. Monitor and evaluate the impact of ICT trials on society, education, etc. Research and review technological development trends to forecast the vision (the technological opportunities). Predict its impact on: policy, law, government, socio-economics, education, working practices, etc. |
Social objectives: employment, quality
of life, environment. Economic development. Addressing the requirements and concerns of Europe’s enterprises, workers and consumers the objective is to enable both individuals and organisations to innovate and be more effective and efficient in their work and business, whilst at the same time improving the quality of the individual’s working life. It will take account of the ageing population and the necessity to remove discriminating factors, such as gender bias, and the need to contribute to increasing resource efficiency and reducing environmental impact. Particular attention will be paid to ensuring that the "innovation dimension" is actively addressed, and to stimulating and supporting the participation of SMEs, so as to contribute to the effective take-up of research results for economic and societal benefit. ... the usability and acceptability of new services, including the security and privacy of information and the socio-economic and ethical aspects. ... socio-economic issues (including the necessary statistical methods and tools): analysis of change; human resources and training; human factors ... [Significant references to education too - see the table below.] Support for the dissemination, promotion and exploitation of [project / programme] results, through a variety of mechanisms including publications, technology transfer networks and innovation activities. Training activities related to the RTD activities covered by the programme, addressing both researchers and users. Analyses of the socio-economic consequences associated with information society technologies developments. Support for exchanges of information, conferences, seminars, workshops or other scientific or technical meetings and the management of clustered RTD activities. |
| Tools | Identify and recruit the leaders of
technological developments. Provide usability and ergonomics recommendations. Test, evaluate and report on the effectiveness and suitability of new technologies. |
... usability and ergonomics ... This includes protecting information integrity, managing intellectual property rights, enhancing privacy and techniques for combating computer crime. Information access, filtering, analysis and handling. Work will focus on advanced technologies for the management of information content to empower the user to select, receive and manipulate (in a manner that respects the user’s right to privacy) only that information required when faced with an ever increasing range of heterogeneous sources. Improvements in the key functionalities of large-scale multimedia asset management systems (including the evolution of the World-Wide Web) will support the cost effective delivery of information services and their usage. Mastering information: rich descriptive models of digital information content, covering all media types and supporting all human senses, in addition to spatial and temporal aspects; associated tools to enable users to develop information profiles, possibly based on vague concepts and enabled via personalised agents; radically new cognitive relations between the system and users via individualised metaphors or visualisation techniques. Measures in support of standardisation and other measures aimed at usability, interoperability and dependability of information and communication technologies, systems applications and services. |
Some of the above IST objectives are relevant to more than one theme. However, for conciseness they have only been allocated to one theme in the table above. Similarly for the table below.
In addition to themes above, we can also provide our own demonstration projects, which can address the following objectives of the IST Programme. [Or is it a "take-up" project? Different levels of EU funding may apply.]
Knowledge Network Activities |
Objectives of
the IST Programme
|
| Set objectives and develop plans
and specifications. Identify and recruit participants. Provide (multimedia) content. Build infrastructure, systems and applications. Develop skills and enhanced working practices. Deliver services. Monitor and evaluate. Disseminate results. |
"Digital
sites" City/Region and "Digital
communities" rural, etc. Work will target the quantitative and qualitative benefits that information society technologies offer in all industrial and societal activities, from more competitive methods of working and doing business to higher-quality, lower-cost general interest services or new forms of leisure and entertainment. Flexible, mobile and remote working methods and tools. Best-practice pilots and scaleable demonstrations, together with dissemination actions to stimulate broad experimentation and adoption will be major features of the work. ... personalising content delivery (via push or pull technologies), by cost-effective content packaging, advertising and transactions, customer profiling and individualised design and presentation (in a manner that respects the user’s right to privacy); exploring the limits between domain-specific and domain-independent content; the work will be complemented by take-up actions including validations and assessments, together with first-user actions and other best-practice initiatives... Education and training. Work will aim at providing the EU with a blueprint for a seamless and cost-effective implementation of advanced technologies for enhancing both education and training systems. This work will focus on the common needs of different teaching and learning processes, on new approaches to lifelong learning, and on innovative ways of integrating multimedia pedagogic material. ... improving the learning process through more autonomous and more individualised learning: work will include local learner support, peer learning, remote tutoring, curriculum/course design systems, and accreditation systems; developing higher quality learning material by improving the quality of the content itself, the embedded pedagogical or didactic approaches, and the adaptability to learner needs: work will address new instructional design tools, learner modelling techniques, modelling methods for knowledge transfer, as well as learning ergonomics, and will cover content ranging from simple hypermedia to advanced simulations; broadening access to learning resources and services for all: work will address common platforms allowing full access to services across heterogeneous networks, including harmonised identification and retrieval of knowledge resources. take-up measures, including trials, best practice actions, first user actions, assessment and qualification actions and other actions aimed at stimulating broad take-up, particularly in SMEs, and encouraging innovation |
Further information and elaboration on the above proposals will come from the Knowledge Network group, which includes Acro Logic.
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This page was last updated on 16 February 1999.
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