The Information Society: Projects

The overall goal of this study by empirica GmbH (Bonn, Germany) and data information intelligence GmbH (Leipzig, Germany), is to provide statistical insights on the current state of deployment of eHealth across Europe and to define an appropriate longer-term procedure for estimating and assessing the eHealth market and its potential, thereby supporting COCIR (European Coordination Committee of the Radiological, Electromedical and Healthcare IT Industry) and industry in their efforts towards developing the European and global market and realising the benefits of eHealth. The specific objectives are to:

• Identify and collect existing market (research) data which can be used to produce an initial market sizing and 5 years forecasts for the overall eHealth or HC ICT market across Europe.
• Provide a segmentation in terms of products/solutions, geographies and customers.
• Design a comprehensive, consistent research and methodology framework as a fundamental step towards a more comprehensive market research and analysis activity as continuation of this market sizing and forecast exercise, which will evolve over the years to come.

The study aims to cover as many of the 27 EU Member States plus Norway and Iceland as feasible and where such data can be obtained within the temporal and budgetary limitations of the study.

The 18 months study – carried out in partnership with the European Schoolnet - will provide a comparative analysis report detailing the main strategies for the integration of ICT in primary schools in the EU27, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland, their impact and future development perspectives. It will contribute to identifying the main impact on learning and learners, on teachers and teaching, as well as on primary school development plans and strategies. The comparative analysis will also provide evidence on which to base a set of recommendations on the integration of ICT in education. It will particularly identify the main drivers and enablers for effective and efficient use of ICT, allowing proposing recommendations for policy makers and stakeholders taking into account the environmental background (cultural, social, and economic).

This is the second study in a series of three linked studies to develop eHealth benchmarking at European level. The study will cover all 27 EU Member States plus Norway and Iceland as well as Canada and the USA. It will conduct background research and review existing measurement tools and systems for ICT for Health, as well as available eHealth statistics, in order to establish a framework for data compilation and to make progress towards the future establishment of an effective eHealth benchmarking system in Europe, collect the data on an agreed set of eHealth related phenomena from existing sources including professional bodies and regional and national ministries. The study will compile data from existing sources rather than generate original data and – depending on the data availability – provide a measurement for each of the agreed indicators in each country, identify, analyse and report good practice in developing and applying eHealth measurements and benchmarking frameworks for informing policy-making (in all 29+2 countries), and develop and deliver 29(+2) Country Briefs summarising key results for each of the European countries and plus Canada and the USA and make all study results available through a dedicated Online Knowledge Base. Thus this study will significantly enhance the capacity of the i2010 initiative to achieve its goals in relation to monitoring and benchmarking eHealth, a key aspect of information society developments in the old and the New Member States.

The study launched by the European Commission DG Enterprise and Industry in late 2006 has identified multi-stakeholder partnerships for e-skills development and related policies using a network of National Correspondents from all EU27 Member States as well as Croatia, Iceland, Norway and Turkey. The main objectives of the study are "to benchmark existing policies and initiatives in Europe on multi-stakeholder partnerships in the field of e-skills and to research and recommend appropriate legal, financial and institutional frameworks for the development of scalable and sustainable multi-stakeholder partnerships. Existing regulations and arrangements have been reviewed with a view to identify barriers inhibiting multi-stakeholder partnerships in the field of e-skills as well as successful solutions already implemented, and to promote the dissemination and the adoption of good practices. The policies and partnerships identified have been analysed and evaluated. This resulted in ten good practice case studies, a benchmarking framework, and recommendations for policy action. Findings are actively disseminated by means of a dedicated website, a major stakeholder workshop as well as a brochure to be distributed widely across Europe.
The project covers more than 30 European countries with national correspondents from the ENIR network

To meet the needs of evidence-based policy, the TRANSFORM project will deliver tested methods for benchmarking ‘transformative' use of ICT in European regions. Analytical tools will be applied to understand why in some regions, despite high rates of adoption of ICT, transformative change does not occur. Typologies and policy insights will describe what it is about ‘regional cultures’ and regional institutional capacities that leads to the observed widely varying outcomes. This strand incorporates a wide-ranging state-of-the-art review; statistical analysis of the relevant inter-relationships; in-depth interpretative case studies of differing regions; construction of regional typologies and synthesis of findings. A second strand will develop and refine methods for benchmarking European regions with respect to the transformative use of ICT. Utilising the project's improved understanding of factors underlying ICT use, indicators of transformative change will be defined at the level of individuals, firms and public agencies. This will incorporate a review of existing indicators and data sources; indicator development, prototyping and piloting; and development of a regional IS benchmarking system. The two strands utilise common concepts, and their common validation framework makes effective use of existing networks of European regions pursuing IS agendas. Outputs are optimised for maximal contribution to i2010 policy development and our recommendations can be expected to be both innovative and influential in shaping future directions.

This study, carried out by empirica together with DIW (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung), will

• contribute to proper understanding of the concepts of trust and confidence, the role consumer trust and confidence plays in practice in today's Information Society and how this role relates to consumer protection and to promoting eInclusion;
• explore in detail the main causes and consequences of problems relating to trust and confidence encountered by consumers, and to highlight the potential and need for concrete measures to address these;
• take stock of policy-making at national level across all 32 EU Member States, Acceding and Candidate Countries, and non-EU EEA countries, establishing how EU legislation is being transposed, how recommendations taken into account and what supplementary legislation and other innovative policy measures have been introduced with what impact;
• identify good policy practice at Member State level and regionally, identifying the means by which consumer trust and confidence in the Information Society can effectively and efficiently be fostered;
• document case studies, presenting good practice and other examples of heuristic value in a way which fully supports inspection and learning by other parties who could benefit from the experience of innovators;
• initiate effective transfer of good practice and related know-how between relevant stakeholder groups and across the borders of individual EU/EEA Member States;
• produce a set of recommendations, concrete descriptions of measures which can be introduced at EU level, which are well-tailored to the interests of target groups and relevant stakeholders, specifying the appropriate time horizon for realisation (short-term, medium-term, long-term) in a format which optimally supports know-how transfer in terms, for example, of language, layout and overall look-and-feel of documents.

The study will strongly to support the i2010 initiative, by providing detailed analysis of the origins as well as the impact of any lack of consumer trust and confidence in Information Society products and services.

empirica together with TNS Emor, Tallinn (Estonia) as a survey organisation will obtain through teacher and head teacher surveys estimates for the indicator on e-learning "number of pupils per computer with internet connection (broadband/non-broadband)" and relate it to other possible indicators of educational use of ICT in compulsory education (e-learning in schools); secondly, look at how ICT are used in schools and provide a measurement of ICT usage in schools regarding the incorporation of ICT in the curricula and the development of new learning methods; and thirdly, provide an interpretation and analysis of the results in an overall report which will also include a description of the situation in each country and overall conclusions. Accordingly the study will carry out a head teacher survey; construct, in cooperation with DG Information Society and Media and DG Education and Culture, new and innovative indicators which can be used to provide a measurement of ICT usage in schools regarding the incorporation of ICT in the curricula and the development of new learning methods; develop an appropriate questionnaire for surveying these indicators in a European-wide classroom teacher survey; develop an overall analysis report which will also include "fiches" describing the situation in each country, as well as an overall conclusion. The study and surveys will cover all 25 EU Member States plus Norway and Iceland. Thus this study will significantly enhance the capacity of the eEurope and i2010 programmes to achieve their goals in relation to monitoring and benchmarking e-learning, a key aspect of information society developments in the old and the New Member States.

The European Commission, like the National Science Foundation in the US and other organisations at national level, has funded the development of e-Infrastructures. Some communities in the sciences such as High Energy Physics, Astronomy and Bioinformatics have adopted the e-infrastructures and engaged in e-Science activities, whereas the social sciences and humanities lag behind. The major goal of the AVROSS study was to understand the reasons behind the low level of adoption of e-Infrastructures in the social sciences. Its main aim is to support optimisation of Grid and Géant developments, firstly by providing an analysis and assessment of the current conditions of use and to provide guidance on how e-Infrastructures may be better deployed and exploited, notably by the social sciences and humanities research communities. The study has employed the following empirical methods to meet its objectives: A survey of early adopters and enthusiasts of e-social science served to identify e-social science projects in the four fields included in the stocktaking in Europe and the US and (to some extent) beyond and a list of highly promising approaches to using e-Infrastructures. Data on the identified projects was collected through the web, as well as e-mail and phone queries to the responsible institutions. From the list of highly promising approaches eight cases were selected for the preparation of multiple case studies. These cases were described through interviews with the initiators, providers, and managers. Moreover, their potentials was assessed through small surveys of the user communities which asked for their awareness, as well as the experiences, needs, and barriers in regard to using these particular tools and approaches. Based on the results of the empirical work a set of recommendations was developed and discussed during a workshop with experts from the EU member states and industry.

The issues of funding, mobility and employment of young researchers are important policy priorities for the European Research Area (ERA). This contribution by empirica, FHNW (CH) and University Wolverhampton (UK), WP2 of RESCAR, replicates NetReact methodology in a survey of doctoral students and post-docs in social sciences and engineering.
Given these policy priorities and concerns about career outcomes for new doctoral graduates, the scope and coverage for information collected focusses on average time from graduation to (permanent) employment, sector mobility and international mobility.
The main sampling unit is the research team or group, understood as a group of people, scientists and non-scientists, who work at the same location for a significant period of time to produce new scientific knowledge. In accordance with NetReAct methodology, each team is affiliated to universities in one of 10 European countries: the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.
Internet research was used to create a sample frame by identifying the overall population of teams in these countries and fields. Stratified, random sampling was then used to draw a sample of at least 1,000 teams from each research field. A questionnaire was addressed to heads of research teams addressing overall team structure, recruiting strategies and procedures and the origins and destinations of post-docs and PhD students. Analysis provides details on the pattern of employment of young researchers enabling recommendations to be made in respect of researcher career development.

The study is conducted by Deloitte Business Advisory NV/SA, Belgium, in co-operation with empirica and provides the European Commission and ENISA with an overview of achievements of the EU-25 Member States and the EEA States (European Economic Area) with respect of Council Resolutions (2002/C 43/02 and 2003/C 48/01) to create a culture of network and information security and ensure common approach amongst the Member States. It provides an overview of the measures taken by the different countries to meet the targets of the Council Resolutions and highlights activities that can act as a role model for other EU countries, grouped by class of activity. Furthermore, it provides a catalogue of responsible Key Actors in the field of network & information security in Europe.
Results will be published on http://www.enisa.europa.eu/.

EPRI start is a project that aims at stimulating, increasing, but at the same time qualifying the participation of SMEs from New Member States of the European Union in the IST Programme that is managed by the European Commission’s DG Information Society.
In particular, it aims at establishing a Qualified Partner Pool of several hundred IST oriented SMEs from NMS, qualified by LoIs and concrete project ideas, developing a Certified Partner Pool of 150 qualified IST oriented SME partners from NMS described by Company Fact Sheets developed by a Guide for NMS participants, ensure an overall number of 50-100 project participations from IST oriented SMEs from NMS in the different IST Calls during the lifetime of the project
The process of stimulating and developing SME participation will feed a second, parallel process which involves political decision makers of the target countries and Political Decision makers on the level of European ICT Policy in order to discuss socio-economic impacts of ICT and to prepare and support the discussion of the 7th Framework Programme.
EPRI start aims at the broadest possible coverage by involving partners from all New Member States of the European Union. On the other hand EPRI start works with a clearly specified and realistic focus on the field of SME participation in the IST programme.
The partner consortium includes partners from 11 European countries and is co-ordinated by Teleport Sachsen-Anhalt GmbH. Empirica is a partner.

Development of the methodology report for the above survey carried out by the national statistical institutes in the EU Member States and co-ordinated by EUROSTAT in 2003. Consideration of related survey activities in the new Member States and non-European OECD countries. Recommendations for the design of a repeat survey.

Das Projekt befasst sich mit der nutzerfreundlichen Gestaltung öffentlicher eUSER supports the IST programme to achieve its key objectives to put the user and his/her needs at the centre of IST developments. It provides empirical information on key public eServices domains - eGovernment, eHealth, eLearning - identified as priorities by the European Council and in the eEurope 2005 action plan, and assesses the demand/supply match in these fields.
Various eServices have been implemented at different levels in the European Union which directly address European citizens. Many of these eServices have been designed and implemented with a superficial understanding of the widely differing needs of its target groups. Online public service providers need to improve their ability and readiness to address generic user issues and their domain-specific needs. Only then Europe will achieve the benefits potentially associated with eGovernment, eHealth and eLearning for all its citizens. eUSER addresses generic user-related issues and develops an globally accessible repository of evidence-based knowledge, methods and best practice examples. It pursues an extensive programme of active knowledge translation, transfer and dissemination supported by sophisticated online knowledge dissemination tools. The knowledge base will consolidate both existing knowledge and approaches, and novel data generated by the project through representative population surveys (demand side) in selected old and new Member States, and through comparative analyses of readiness to address user aspects of public eServices in each Member State (supply side). The project will also provide robust benchmarking and prospective analyses that will be of value for the eEurope 2005 action and for EU public administration, public health and education policy.
Over 24months, partners located in four Member States and further ones from Canada will cooperate on these issues. In addition, all other European Union Member States and two Candidate Countries will be covered by national correspondents.
Karsten Gareis: Towards User-centred eGovernment – Understanding Potential Demand for Online Public Services. Paper presented at the TeleCities conference “Urban Impacts of the Information Society: Facts, Fiction and Policies”, March 17-19 2004, The Hague.
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The study is to capture, describe and analyse strategies, patterns, dynamics and impacts of networking in European life science research. The focus is on networking activities between universities and other research teams, whether university or industry-based, and on the capacity of research units in the life sciences to attract doctoral students and post-docs from outside their own geographic area.
The methodology of the study includes:

• a questionnaire-based survey, targeted principally at heads of research units, to collect data on doctoral students, post-docs and collaboration strategy,
• bibliometric analysis, based on publication and citation statistics from the Thomson-ISI database, to assess levels of collaboration and research output,
• webometric analysis, based on hyperlinks published in the internet, to evaluate the position of research institutions in life sciences networks.

The NetReAct project was commissioned by the Joint Research Centre (Seville) of the European Commission. The consortium, led by empirica, consists of the University of Applied Sciences Solothurn Northwestern Switzerland, Steunpunt O&O Statistieken at the Faculty of Economics and Applied Economics of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and the School of Computing and IT at the University of Wolverhampton, UK.

SIBIS is a European-wide project which was funded within the IST Programme which is part of the 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The project duration was from January 2001 to September 2003 and its objective was the development and piloting of new and innovative statistical indicators for benchmarking different phenomena and developments in an Information Society. These indicators were piloted in representative population and establishment surveys in the 15 EU Member States, 10 Acceding and Candidate countries, the US and Switzerland in 2002 and 2003. SIBIS offers a worldwide unique and outstanding data set with up-to-date comparable statistical data on the Information Society in 27 countries. The project results are publicly available via topic reports, Country reports, a statistics pocketbook, highlights documents and a SIBIS eEurope Indicator handbook and can be downloaded from the SIBIS website.

BISER is a European-wide project which was funded within the IST Programme which is part of the 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The project duration was from December 2001 to November 2003 and its objective was the development and piloting of new and innovative statistical indicators ("eEurope Regions Indicators") for measuring and benchmarking the status of development of EU regions towards the Information Society. As part of a stock-taking exercise existing statistical indicators from publicly and otherwise available sources were gathered and new indicators relating to relevant policy areas (e.g. enterprise, labour market, health, traffic) defined and operationalised. The data gathering instruments were tested in two large-scale representative surveys of the population and establishments in 28 selected European regions. The results will – amongst others – be used for an analysis of regional disparities in the European Union. An electronic newsletter can be subscribed for the regular information about the project.

Development of the methodology report for the above survey carried out by the national statistical institutes in the EU Member States and co-ordinated by EUROSTAT in 2002. Consideration of related survey activities in the new Member States and non-European OECD countries. Recommendations for the design of a repeat survey.

Development of a theoretical framework for gathering statistical data in the topic areas eSkills and eSecurity or the organisation of future targeted data gathering surveys by the European Commission. Development of questions, questionnaire modules and methodological recommendations for future surveys in this area and a glossary of terms.

STAR is a European-wide project which was funded within the IST Programme which is part of the 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The project duration was from September 2000 to December 2003 and its objective was an analysis of the socio-economic impact of new ICT and services on work and the economy. The focus was on the identification of drivers and barriers for economic growth and employment. The STAR consortium includes five renowned research institutions from Italy, France, Greece, the United Kingdom and Germany which published around 50 research and issue reports. Empirica was responsible for the topic "new ways of working", "eBusiness" and "public online administration". All issue reports can be downloaded from the STAR website. Once per year, empirica conducted a survey of the STAR expert forum in which the experts were asked for their opinions relating to specific trends in an Information Society. Summary reports of these surveys can also be downloaded.