Competitiveness and Innovation Programme
The new European Commission “Competitiveness and Innovation Framework programme” (CIP) runs from 2007 to 2013. With a total budget of 3.6 billion euros, the new programme seeks to bring together a number of existing programmes as well as new initiatives under one banner as a “coherent and integrated response to the objectives of the renewed Lisbon strategy”. The Programme aims at three key aspects of the Lisbon strategy each covered by a separate programme within the framework:
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The enhancement of competitiveness and innovative capacity (Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme)
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The advancement of the knowledge society (ICT Policy Support Programme)
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Sustainable development based on balanced economic growth (Intelligent Energy-Europe Programme).
ICT Policy Support Programme
Aligned on the aims of the new strategy for a European Information Society (i2010), the ICT Policy Support Programme builds on previously existing programmes: e-TEN, Modinis and e-Content. The i2010 strategy was developed as an integrated response to needs to re-launch the Lisbon strategy. It covers three priorities:
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The completion of a Single European Information Space, paying particular attention to providing faster broadband access, responding to the legal requirements of the emerging market place, ensuring the interoperability of platforms and devices and finally making the Internet a safer place.
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Strengthening innovation and investment in ICT research with the longer-term goal of providing more and better jobs.
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Achieving an inclusive European Information Society by linking the notion of growth to sustainability and ensuring that increased use of ICT benefits all citizens, in particular through better and more accessible public services as well as improved quality of life.
e-TEN
The e-Ten programme aimed to encourage the validation and early-stage deployment of trans-European e-services that were in line with European Union goals such as contributing to growth, employment and social cohesion as well as wide-scale participation in the knowledge-based economy. Services covered a set of key areas including elearning, where the major thrust concerned quality and access to educational multimedia services, the promotion of life-long learning, reskilling the workforce and promoting digital literacy. Deployment costs for initial rollout could be covered to up to 30%, whereas up to 50% of market validation costs could be funded.
e-Contentplus
Following on from the earlier eContent programme, the eContentplus programme runs from 2005 to 2008 and aims to facilitate access to digital content, its use and exploitation, to enhance quality of content with well-defined metadata, to tackle multilingual and multicultural barriers and to reinforce cooperation between digital content stakeholders. Amongst other things, it addresses specific market areas where development has been slow: geographic content, educational content, cultural, scientific and scholarly content. The draft work programme for educational content in eContentplus for 2007, which is seen as complimentary to the Lifelong Learning programme, covers two areas: 1) best practice networks on educational content, in particular with respect to specifications and standards for learning technologies and 2) targeted projects for educational content. The latter addresses three issues: facilitating the co-existence, use and exchange of existing learning content; improving semantic interoperability so as to enable the educational use of cultural heritage material not initially designed for that purpose; improving ease of access and usability of content for users.
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