This fifth ITEA Programme Report covers the second half of 2001 (1 July - 31 December 2001). While most of the information presented here relates to this period, newer information has been included as it became available.
The ITEA programme is proceeding at full speed, currently with a fifth Call for Project Outlines. Eight of the projects in the first Call have now been completed, five of them in this reporting period (BEYOND, RTIPA, DESS, PEPITA, and TASSC). The ITEA reviewers as well as those mandated by the ITAC all rated them as excellent, not just from a technical viewpoint, but also in terms of cooperation and dissemination.
Call 1 to 4 comprised 36 projects, and involved 4,634 person-years (breakdown: 70% large companies, 14% SMEs, 6% research labs, 10% universities). Three quarters of the person-years were concentrated in four countries: France (30%), the Netherlands (20%), Italy (14%) and Germany (12%).
Thanks to the new ITEA-ITAC Working Group (set up as a result of a meeting of the ITEA Board and the Directors Committee in June 2001), the exchange of information between ITEA and ITAC and the review preparation process have improved considerably.
In October, our second symposium took place in the “Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften” in the heart of the old city. Participants - impressed by the progress demonstrated in the exhibition and in a number of plenary project presentations - hailed the event as a great success. The next symposium will be held in Amsterdam on 10 and 11 October 2002.
The ITEA Technology Roadmap, which was published in March 2001, is now widely viewed as a major guideline for the development of software-intensive systems. At the symposium in Berlin the excellent work of the roadmap core team was acknowledged with the ITEA Achievement Award. A follow-up is planned, and a somewhat revised core team will deliver the first updates at the end of this year.
The level of R&D activity currently lies between 1,300 and 1,400 person-years per year. However, due to the sub-optimal response to Call 4, we expect an overall decline in person-years over 2002 and 2003. Not only did this Call start at a lower level; a lack of grant funding led to a further fall in the number of person-years. This means that the success of Call 5 is crucial. Its opening was communicated to a wide audience - over 2,500 individuals directly (via email) and to many more indirectly (via the national websites and contact lists of ITAC members). The Call 5 Project Outline Preparation Day in January was a success: with many attendees and a wide variety of promising initial project ideas.
As ever, Public Relations and Communications remain important to ITEA. A new Corporate Identity has been defined and is ready for implementation. One result is our very first ‘corporate’ brochure, which will be published in April 2002. Our website is also a key communication tool, and we are continuously adding content and improving its structure. The aim is for it to become a ‘portal’, where anyone who needs to know about the ITEA programme can find everything they need.
On behalf of ITEA and MEDEA+, the chairmen of both programmes jointly approached European Commissioners Busquin and Liikanen on improving the cooperation between Eureka and the IST-in-FP6 programme. The chairmen were invited to explore possibilities for further improving cooperation.
At their meeting on 29 November, the ITEA Board welcomed THALES as a new voting member, represented on the Board by Mr D. Potier. For Italtel Mr M. Pignolo succeeded Mr G. Arrigoni. Meanwhile, Mr C. van Mourik has been appointed as our new Office Director; he started work on 1 January 2002. After several months of re-modelling work, the ITEA Office finally moved into new and much more representative accommodation in the same building on the Eindhoven University of Technology Campus, which itself is upgraded considerably.
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