HUNAGI member invited to the eContentplus Meeting hosted by DG InfSo

Stakeholders' consultative meeting
Euroforum, Luxembourg
October 17, 2006
The European Parliament and the Council adopted in 2005 a multi-annual Community Programme, eContentplus, to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable. The programme is implemented through yearly major calls for proposals and has a total budget of 149 million euros, with 93 million euros for the period 2007-2008. Calls have been published in 2005 and 2006. Unit E6 of DG Information Society and Media is responsible for carrying out the programme.DG InfSo is planning to organise a consultation meeting with stakeholders in the area of Geographic Information in Luxembourg on October17th to discuss the continuation of the programme for the remaining years 2007-2008, especially for the call of 2007. This will be done in light of the results of the calls already held, the development of the Geographic Information market and with respect to the political agenda covering the area.
This consultation is held in order to have your views on how one of the main eContentplus objectives of making GI more accessible, usable and exploitable at European level can be achieved. A number of specific points which will be discussed:
1 What is needed in the broad field of GI to achieve the above mentioned objective?2 In which specific GI fields is the difficulty of accessing harmonised data at European level limiting the creation of new products/services and therefore market opportunities?3 Which are the specific spatial data themes where eContentplus can have the maximum impact with the available resources? Why?4 Should eContentplus concentrate on "core-mapping"? Why? Are the resources available sufficient to make an impact in this field?5 Should eContentplus focus on the aggregation/harmonisation of geographic information at European level or have a more "market oriented" approach where the focus is on the creation of new product/services?6 How is it possible to reach (and measure) tangible (data sets, member states, users etc.) and intangible (increased interaction and knowledge sharing) success?
More details including relevant documents:
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/econtentplus/index_en.htm" href=" here__________________________________
European Commission
Information Society and Media DGEuroforum
1180, L-2920 Luxembourg
http://europa.eu.int/econtentplus