EU-Indo ICT Policy Stakeholders Workshop – 10th Nov 2010, Claridges Suraj Kund, Delhi, India
The main aim of this event/workshop was to solicit stakeholders’ views and issues and consolidate them into recommendations for EU-India research in ICT domain.
The workshop started at 10:00 with the arrival of participants. The workshop brought together about 55 stakeholders’ from academia, industry and government bodies. The workshop was divided into morning and afternoon sessions.
The morning session focused on general session and afternoon session focused on recommendations made by expert group and working group.
General session started with the presentation on Euro-India SPIRIT and Synchroniser projects.
- Florence Pesce, Euro-India Spirit Coordinator, presented on main objectives of both the Euro-India SPIRIT and Synchroniser projects whose main objective is to boost the impact of EU-India ICT Policy Dialogue leading to better policy coordination and enhanced collaborative research activities.
- Dr. G Narendra Kumar, Joint Secretary Performance Management Division, Cabinet Secretariat presented on Indian ICT Policy issues.
- Alvis Ancans, European Commission DG Information Society and Media International Relations Unit presented EU-India Cooperation Opportunities under FP7.
- Ashok Kar presented on Euro-India SPIRIT Project which gives an overview of the Euro-India SPIRIT project which identify long term Indian ICT policy perspectives and help align with those of the European Union ICT research policy, research programmes and priorities and recommendations for future co-operation initiatives.
- Mauro Bianchi presented on Synchroniser Project which gave an insight into the Synchroniser Steering Committee (SSC), a platform where elite researchers and industry stakeholders from both EU & India are brought together to brainstorm and identify challenges and make recommendations for precise research paths for EU-India joint collaboration.
- Neeraj Suri and Jim Clarke offer a guide to EC cooperation. With the emphasis mutual cooperation for both European and Indian organizations seeking to collaboration through EC-funded initiatives, the presentation examines problems/technologies of common interest between India and Europe, areas such as trans-national research where synergy is a necessity for ensuring success, and areas where India and Europe can leverage from each other’s experience and expertise.
- Jim Clarke presented on some of the benefits of engagement for Indians engaging in the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) which offers a series of collaborative EU-Indian research opportunities. FP7 projects are defined, as well as information on European Technology Platforms.
- Mounib Mekhilef, Ability Europe Ltd and Co-chair of the Euro-India SPIRIT ICT Addressing Societal Challenges Working Group offers detailed insight into various Indian initiatives that address societal challenges and examines how these ideas could be applied to the EC-funded Seventh Framework Programme in order to improve EU-Indian collaboration. With many avenues to EC-funded projects available to Indian organizations, Mounib examines practical ways how to transform a research idea into an EC-fundend project.
Afternoon session focused on:
- Mauro Bianchi, TESEO, Belgium gives an overview of the SYNCHRONISER project objectives, activities and main outputs to date. This presentation offered an insight to the recommendations and results of the findings of SSC expert group on joint EU & India research paths.
- Mounib Mekhilef, Ability Europe Ltd and Co-chair of the Euro-India SPIRIT ICT Addressing Societal Challenges Working Group presented the outcomes of the working group discussions on 9 November 2010 who discussed ICT for Health, Ageing Well, Inclusion and Governance, ICT for a low carbon economy and ICT for Learning and Access to Cultural Resources. The WG group members involved in the discussions were Parminder Jeet Singh, IT for Change, India - Nicole Turbé Suetens, Distance Expert, France - P.N Vasanti, Centre for Media Studies, India - Mounib Mekhilef, Ability Europe, France.
- Jim Clarke, Waterford Insitiute of Technology & Euro-India SPIRIT AudioVisual Media & Internet Co-Chair presents some of the relevant opportunities & challenges to Europe-India cooperation. He gives also a pragmatic example based on WG2-WG3 assumptions. According to Clarke, these themes should be explored further: European Technology Platforms (ETP), clusters, collaborative research with EU specially in digital media like animation, gaming & VFX, mobile Internet devices, digital television infrastructure, 3D media Internet.
Copyright © 2010, EIRC 
