CAPSIL

The European Commission, Directorate-General Information Society and Media, acting on behalf of the Office of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC Office), intends to launch a negotiated procedure for low value contracts (maximum value 60000 EUR) for the provision of security services at BEREC Office premises in Riga, Latvia.

With effect from 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012 EU mobile operators will again be obliged to lower retail prices for roaming calls in line with EU rules first introduced in 2007 and amended in 2009. Consumers opting for the EU-regulated "Eurotariff" will pay no more than 35 cents per minute for calls made and 11 cents per minute for calls received while abroad in the EU. This is the last in the series of regulated price cuts under the current EU Roaming Regulation, which expires end June 2012.

This video-report gives a short overview of the European Union Policy and Research activities on eHealth including funded project demos

The Congress is organised by the European Office of Cyprus under the auspices of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU 2012. It will explore new tools to bring researchers and enterprises together from all over the world. The congress aims to: Improve links between scientific and business communities; promote private sector investment in science, innovation and enterprise development; and to encourage SMEs and scientists to exploit global knowledge resources and increase innovation financing mechanisms.

If you were not present or missed the important part of it, watch this short video-report of the eHealth Week, the Europe's largest pan-European conference: an all encompassing event focusing on leadership and the continuum of care – healthcare from the home to the hospital. This year the event also addressed other related subjects such as pharma, regional eHealth solutions and Active and Healthy Ageing partnerships.

The 14th edition of the European Journal of ePractice will be devoted to the theme ‘Policy lessons from a decade of eGovernment, eHealth & eInclusion’. The key question of this issue is: what are the theoretical and interpretative frameworks that can help us make better sense of the evidence already collected and support new and innovative policy approaches? Given the broad scope of the Policy Lessons issue, the call for papers for this edition provides a list of non-exhaustive topics for potential authors to think about. The editor of this issue is Cristiano Codagnone and the editor in chief is Trond Arne Undheim. Contributions of both an empirical and theoretical nature, from policy, organisational and/or technical perspectives are welcome.

Health 2.0 is currently taking speaker submissions for the upcoming event taking place in Berlin in October 2011. Themes will include patient and physician social networks, communities and data production, search & content, health promotion, behavior change and wellness 2.0, data utility layer & tools, cloud computing and unplatforms, and more. If you are in the Health 2.0 space and offer a technology or service that is particularly innovative or provides a solution to a major healthcare challenge, submit your paper before 15 September 2011.

The deadline for the submission of papers for the 4th European Conference "Innovations in the Environmental Sector - Competence Models, E‐Learning, Social Communities" has been extended to 4 July 2011. The conference itself takes place in Brussels on 21 September 2011.

Coordinated by the European Commission, this campaign promotes enterprise across Europe in line with the Small Business Act for Europe. It is taking place in 37 countries, so events and activities – national, regional or local – will be as close as possible to existing and potential entrepreneurs. These events – organised by business organisations, business support providers and national, regional and local authorities – will also enable existing companies to share their experience and develop further themselves.

Mobility in Europe is growing as European citizens travel abroad more and more often for business reasons, as commuters or as exchange students. This increased mobility also leads to a greater need for supportive measures for the travelling population, in particular in the healthcare sector. When abroad, we all could find ourselves in need of medical care some day. The epSOS consortium has taken on the goal of improving medical treatment of European citizens while abroad. This year, the epSOS pilot operation phase will be initiated.

Thirteen photonics research projects are being launched in the field of high-speed fibre broadband networks with the aim of developing technologies to deliver super fast internet speeds to the home in excess of 1 Gigabit per second. The projects were jointly selected in 2010 by the European Commission, Austria, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and Israel, who are together paying a total of €22.3 million towards them. The research projects will run for two to three years. Giving every European access to fast and ultra fast broadband by 2020 and boosting investment in European information and communications technology research are key objectives of the Digital Agenda for Europe.

OECD High Level Meeting on the Internet Economy, Paris, 28 June 2011.

A key expert group set up by the Commission today set out guidelines on giving European industry a competitive edge in deploying the industrial technologies of the future (Key Enabling Technologies). The main conclusions call on decision-makers to adopt radical policy objectives to retain critical capability and capacity in Europe through a single and comprehensive approach to KETs. In particular, the group recommends that the vital importance of KETs should be reflected in the structure and funding balance in the upcoming framework for research and innovation and in the priorities of the EU's future regional policy. KETs are embedded at the core of innovative advanced products, such as electric cars and mobile phones. The High-Level Group was launched on 13 July 2010 by Vice-Presidents Antonio Tajani and Neelie Kroes and Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn and met three times.

For any healthcare systems, chronic diseases represent the heaviest cost burden. A plethora of ICT based applications have been developed in recent years, allowing a partial tackling of problems related to specific diseases. CLEAR proposes the implementation of a tele-rehabilitation service in four European Member States (IT, ES, NL, PL). The ambition is to convert the project, after its completion, to a European service for tele-rehabilitation and to contribute to the harmonization of e-health services in the EU.

On the occasion of the 1st Digital Agenda Assembly EDF and its partners launched their campaign for Accessible websites. 95% of public websites remain inaccessible. Concretely, this means that older people and persons with disabilities cannot access vital information online and perform the same everyday tasks as non-disabled people can. The European Commission has committed to improving web-accessibility by 2015: The Digital Agenda for Europe, one of the flagships of the Europe 2020 Strategy, and the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020 mention a legislative proposal that would “ensure that public sector websites and websites providing basic services to citizens are fully accessible by 2015”. By concluding the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the EU committed to take action to ensure equal access to information to persons with disabilities.

The present call for proposals aims at supporting public procurers in purchasing new and improved solutions, products and services in areas of grand societal challenges as defined by Innovation Union communication. This objective is to be realised through establishing trans-national networks to enable Contracting Authorities (as defined by Directives 2004/18/EC and 2004/17/EC) and organizations supporting innovation procurement: to offset the additional risks and costs, to collaborate to create a critical mass, to test the feasibility and implementation modalities of a future EU support scheme.

A roadmap is being developed for research on accessible user interfaces. The roadmap will include: (a) Clear proposals on what technologies need to be supported (eg eye tracking, voice/gesture reckoning, wearable devices, smart displays). (b) Clear inputs on what methodologies have to be investigated (eg adaptive UI design, accessibility evaluation guidelines for devices, services and applications). (c) Clear contributions on what kind of tools should be developed (eg automatic accessibility verification/design tools, accessible user interface description languages). This roadmap is one of the inputs to the thinking and direction of future research funding by the European Commission in this area, and the aim is to gather input from a diverse range of stakeholders.

Online Tracking Protection & Browsers Workshop, Brussels, 22 June 2011

The “Future Internet Week” will consist of a series of events, such as conferences, meetings and workshops, covering different aspects of the Future Internet. The event is organised in connection with the Polish Presidency of the EU.

Only two social networking sites (Bebo and MySpace) tested on behalf of the European Commission have default settings to make minors' profiles accessible only to their approved list of contacts and only 4 sites ensure minors can be contacted by default by friends only (Bebo, MySpace, Netlog and SchuelerVZ). However, a majority of 14 social networking sites tested do give minors age-appropriate safety information, respond to requests for help and prevent minors' profiles from being searched via external search engines. The number of minors using social networking sites in the EU is growing - currently 77% of 13-16 year olds and 38% of 9-12 year olds who use the Internet.