Description
The major objective of IST-BONUS was to upgrade the participation of organisations from the NMS & ACC (including Turkey) to the FP6-IST Priority both in quantitative and qualitative terms, particularly regarding two wide areas: e-business and e-working technologies and related state-of-the-art applications; which can have significant impact on Europe’s competitiveness, sustainability and societal cohesion.
IST-BONUS aimed to facilitate the transition of competent NMS & ACC organizations from ‘research followers’ (that is partners with low capability to influence research course) to ‘research leaders’ (coordinators or major partners of RTD projects). To achieve this ambitious endeavour IST-BONUS implemented actions sufficiently including ‘conventional’ activities such as (i) Information days, workshops, (ii) training events towards SMEs from NMC & ACC targeting to a large number of interested organisations.
However, the project innovated by providing to a selective number of highly motivated and competent organisations from NMS & ACC a set of advanced capacity enhancement services such as:
- Audits, SWOTs,
- e-business research action plans
- Elaboration of PR research profiles,
- Roadmaps to excellence in ICT,
- Networking events with EU-15 research leaders and EC services.
Furthermore, IST-BONUS deployed actions promoting the ERA coordination: IST-BONUS prepared a Report on “Main e-Business policies / major national initiatives on e-Business in New Member States (NMS) & Accession Candidate Countries (ACC)” on June 2005, targeting to:
- Examine main e-Business (and e-Work) policies in the NMS and ACC (In particular in 7 NMS and 3 ACC: Turkey, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Romania and Bulgaria).
- Present policy priority areas in research per NMS and ACC.
- Identify major national initiatives on e-Business (and e-Work).
- Provide a list of key contact points at national level.
This report targeted to contribute to the European Research Area (ERA) in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and support discussion and co-ordination initiatives among national key players, the EC and the key European research players already participating in the clustering initiatives of the EC.
Q-PLAN responsibilities
- Project Management / Coordination
- Elaboration of E-business research action plans
- Roadmaps to excellence in ICT
- Information and training to more than 500 SMEs and research organisations from the targeted countries
- Organisation of 3 European Networking Events with more than 250 participants from all over Europe (SMEs mainly)
- Web-portal, partner search tools and a Database with more than 600 collaboration profiles from SMEs and research organisation.
- Report on “Main e-Business policies / major national initiatives on e-Business in New Member States (NMS) & Accession Candidate Countries (ACC)”
- Elaboration of the Training Guide “Towards Successful Participation in European ICT Research’: a. Advice on Research Strategy & Action Planning. b. Guidance on research project development & project management