Roland Haber

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eContent European Digital Content on the Global
Networks

• Roland Haber
• On behalf of the European Commission

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Agenda

• The rational
• The eContent programme
• The focus in 2003 - 2004

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More and more people are connectingto the global
networks
According to Nua.com 605 million people have
internet access (Q3 2002)
190 million of those live in Europe, and the
number is growing
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The ability to deliver rich content over the
networks is increasing
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Even if the latest stock market downturns has
slowed down the technology sectors
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Rich content base

• Europe has

Long publishing tradition
Assets in linguistic and cultural
customisation
World ranking players
...but it is
Lagging in e-publishing
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The objectives of the eContent programme

• improving access for all to high-quality digital
  content on the global networks
• in a multiplicity of languages, catering for
  different cultures
• supporting the increased availability, use and
  distribution of European digital content

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How will the eContent programme reach these
ambitions?
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100 million Euro
Action Line 1
Action Line 2
Action Line 3
Enhancing content production in a multilingual
and multicultural environment
Increasing dynamism of the digital content market
Improving access to and expanding the use of
public sector information
40-45
40-45
10-15
Call 3
Call 4
24-26 million
2005
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Call 3
Call 4
Action line 1 Improving access to and expanding
use of public sector information
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Action line 1 Public sector information

• What is public sector information?
• Legal/administrative data.
• Financial/economical data,
• Culture, archives, entertainment, information
  material
• Geographical data including land and property
  information, traffic information, environmental
  data
• Services at local level such at education, health
  etc.
• Science and technical information
• And more..

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Action line 1 Public sector information

• Important for citizens
• Bringing citizens closer to administrations
• Important in the democratic process
• Important for business
• Essential to make business strategies
• Crucial for taking advantage of the internal
  market rights
• And in particular for the content industries
• Source for new information products (aggregation)

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Action line 1 Public sector information
(1.1) Cross-border information services based on
public sector information. What the
Commission is looking for? - The
cross-border nature of the information
service - The added-value nature of the
information service - The business case,
- Re-use aspect
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Action line 1 Public sector information
(1.2) Establishment of European digital data
collections based on public sector
information What the Commission is looking
for? Projects that will show Coverage
of a considerable part of Europe - Scalability
Impact of the action on the digital content
market Involvement of Candidate Countries
where appropriate
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Call 3
Call 4

• Action Line 2
• Producing Content in a multilingual and
  multicultural environment

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Action line 2 Multilingual and
multicultural environment
Objective
To ease access to and ensure a wider availability
of high quality networked content across markets
and communities, by encouraging co-operation
between the European content and language
industries.
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Action line 2 Multilingual and multicultural
environment
What the Commission is looking for? (1)
Partnerships for multilingual and multicultural
content between various actors in the content and
language industries localisation of
applications and services addressing
multimedia content accessible through various
platforms and devices
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Action line 1 Public sector information
Action line 2 Multilingual and multicultural
environment
What the Commission is looking for? (2) Projects
strengthening the linguistic infrastructure in
Europe - Networking of existing regional and
national resources and their access and use by
content actor - Development of new multilingual
resources for less widely spoken languages
- Covering an adequate number of languages
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Call 3
Call 4

• Action Line 3
• Increasing dynamism of the digital content market

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Action line 3 Increasing dynamism of the digital
content market
Objective
To support the European content market by
horizontal actions that increase the
effectiveness of the main action lines of the
programme.
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Action line 3 Increasing dynamism of the digital
content market
(3.1) Exchange of good practices To stimulate the
exchange of best-practices throughout Europe on
the re-use of public sector information and the
linguistic customisation of content. What the
Commission is looking for? - case studies,print
and electronic publications, and presentations
at major public event. - Thematic networks to
improve the learning processes and the exchange
of good practices on the re-use of public
sector information at European level
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Action line 3 Increasing dynamism of the digital
content market
(3.3) Management of rights for digital
content Stimulate an environment for the
acceptance of right clearance solutions for
digital content, with a special attention given
to material originating from the public
sector. What the Commission is looking
for? Actions aiming at creating a dialogue
between - content creators, - collecting
societies, - content industry players and -
consumer organisations. Identification of
emerging business models and pricing schemes.
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Ideal eContent project
eContent co-funded project available
technology right partnerships innovative
idea with a business model

• Based on
• Re-use of public sector information
• Linguisticallyculturally customised content

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Contact points info
http//www.cordis.lu/econtent
Help desk
eContent_at_cec.eu.int