Executive Summary

Intermediate Programme Report 2004 (January - June 2004)

Previous Executive Summaries

This is the first intermediate report that, as part of our new approach, contains only progress reports on projects and the major changes within the ITEA programme. To accompany these reports, up-to-date statistical information will be available in a password-protected area of our website.

Mid-Term Assessment of ITEA

The final assessment report was presented and discussed during the joint ITEA Directors Committee (DC) and ITEA Board meeting on April 2nd, 2004. The report was very positive and made a total of 17 recommendations on how to proceed. The key recommendation was emphatic: “ …to continue ITEA”.

The meeting handed the monitoring and progression of the recommendations to a specific ITAC-ITEA working group. Conclusions of this WG will be presented within a Board-DC meeting at the next symposium. In the mean time, an internal ITEA working group has begun the follow-up of the recommendations for ITEA, under the current working name “ITEA-NEXT”.

ITEA Prolongation

Following the mid-term assessment (MTA) recommendations, and in order to finish projects under Call 7 and Call 8, it's possible that a prolongation of the current ITEA programme is needed. An official request has been passed to the Dutch authorities, asking them to handle this during the next EUREKA High Level Group (HLG) meeting in October this year.

ITEA Technology Roadmap – second edition

The second edition of the ITEA Technology Roadmap for Software-Intensive Systems was released officially during the 26th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2004) in Edinburgh (UK). To use an understatement: we received many positive reactions and it's another indication that the Roadmap 2 Core Team did an excellent job. We are, of course, very grateful to this team. We also thank the public authorities for their financial support. The document can be downloaded free of charge from ITEA's website.

EUREKA

During the June' EUREKA Ministerial Conference, the Netherlands took over the chair from France. The next chair will be the Czech Republic who, following a decision taken at the conference, will be followed by Italy. A press release was issued and is available from EUREKA' s website.

EUREKA & EC Framework Programme

European Technology Platforms (for FP7) are the major development in this first half-year and could be instrumental in realising the long envisaged improvement in co-operation between EUREKA and the Framework Programme. For ITEA, the most important platform is the one relating to “Embedded Systems”. At present this is at a definition stage. Several meetings have taken place with the High-Level Group managing this platform and the ITEA Chairman was invited as an observer. Working groups (WG) were established. ITEA's Vice-chairman participated in the WG for Embedded Systems design and ITEA's Office Director in the WG for Governance. A report from the High-Level Group on embedded systems is issued and available via the platform's own website, and a name has been agreed: Advanced Research and Technology for Embedded Intelligence & Systems (ArtEmls).

Project Overview

During the 5th Call, 19 projects were labelled, involving around 3,000 person-years. At the beginning of July 2004 there were 14 projects, representing 1,648 person-years, up and running or in the start-up phase. Taking into account our current information regarding funding, our forecast is 13 projects with around 1,500 person-years.

During our 6th Call, 15 projects were accepted and labelled, representing over 2,200 person-years in total. Taking into account the fact that available funding is limited, and that some Change Requests are expected, we forecast 10 projects continuing, accounting for around 1,000 person-years.

In April 2004 we received 45 Project Outlines as a result of our 7th Call. These account for over 5,000 person-years. Of these, 27 projects were invited to submit a Full Project Proposal, representing around 3,775 person-years.

ITEA's current project portfolio, Calls 1-6, comprises 61 projects, of which 27 are completed, 31 are on going, and three are in their start-up phase. In addition, 16 projects have been stopped.

Measured in terms of person-years per year, our forecast made in January for 2004 for the year 2004 showed an upward trend, bringing us back to the 2001 level. This now seems to have been too optimistic. The forecast made in July is below 1,200.

During the first half of 2004, 14 Project Reviews were conducted. All of these had very positive results.

The 5th ITEA Symposium
ITEA and Emerging Trends – Our role in software-intensive systems

On 7-8 October 2004, some 250 software experts together with corporate and academic ICT policy-makers from all over Europe will meet for the 5th ITEA Symposium in the CASINO DE LA EXPOSION in Seville, Spain. During the Symposium dinner, the ITEA Achievement Award will be presented for the fourth time. A key element of the symposium is the project exhibition in which teams from around 35 projects will show their progress and results.

Organisational issues

At the end of June Mr Colaiemma, representing Italtel, succeeded Mr M. Pocaterra in the Steering Group. Effective from September 1st, Mr Antoine Pery from Thomson will succeed Mr Riccardo Capobianchi as ITEA Programme Manager.