Annexes to COM(2004)96 - Multiannual Community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable

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dossier COM(2004)96 - Multiannual Community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable.
document COM(2004)96 EN
date March  9, 2005
Agreement as amended by Decision 2003/429/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJ L 147, 14.6.2003, p. 25).


ANNEX I

Actions

I. INTRODUCTION

eContentplus has the overall aim of making digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable, facilitating the creation and diffusion of information, in areas of public interest, at Community level.

It will create better conditions for accessing and managing digital content and services in multilingual and multicultural environments. It will broaden users' choice and support new ways of interacting with knowledge-enhanced digital content, a feature which is becoming essential to make content more dynamic and tailored to specific contexts (learning, cultural, people with special needs, etc.).

The Programme will pave the way for a structured framework for quality digital content in Europe — The European Digital Content Area — by facilitating transfer of experiences, best practice and cross-fertilisation between content sectors, content providers and users.

(a)facilitating at Community level access to digital content, its use and exploitation;

(b)facilitating improvement of quality and enhancing best practice related to digital content between content providers and users, and across sectors;

(c)reinforcing cooperation between digital content stakeholders and awareness.

II.   LINES OF ACTION

A.Facilitating at Community level access to digital content, its use and exploitation

The activities to be carried out under this line of action encompass the establishment of networks and alliances between stakeholders, encouraging the creation of new services.

Target areas are public sector information, spatial data, learning and cultural content.

Focus will be on:
(a)supporting a wider recognition of the importance of public sector information (PSI), its commercial value and associated societal implications of its use. Activities shall improve effective cross-border use and exploitation of PSI between public sector organisations and private companies, including SMEs, for added-value information products and services;

(b)encouraging a wider use of spatial data by public sector bodies, private companies, including SMEs, and citizens through cooperation mechanisms at European level. Activities should tackle both technical and organisational issues, avoiding duplications and underdeveloped territorial data sets. They should promote cross-border interoperability, supporting coordination between mapping agencies and fostering the emergence of new services at European level for mobile users. They should also support the use of open standards;

(c)fostering the proliferation of open European knowledge pools of digital objects, for education and research communities, as well as the individual. The activities will support the creation of trans-European brokering services for digital learning content, with associated business models. The activities should also encourage the use of open standards, and the creation of large user groups analysing and testing pre-standardisation and specifications schemes with a view to conveying European multilingual and multicultural aspects into the process of definition of global standards for digital learning content;

(d)promoting the emergence of trans-European information infrastructures for accessing and using high quality European digital cultural and scientific resources through the linking of virtual libraries, community memories, etc. Activities should encompass coordinated approaches to digitisation and collection building, preservation of digital objects and inventories of cultural and scientific digital resources. They should improve access to digital cultural and scientific assets through effective licensing schemes and collective pre-emptive clearing of rights.

B.Facilitating improvement of quality and enhancing best practice related to digital content between content providers and users, and across sectors

The activities to be carried out under this line of action are intended to facilitate the identification and wide diffusion of best practice in methods, processes and operations to achieve higher quality, greater efficiency and effectiveness in the creation, use and distribution of digital content.

These activities encompass experiments that demonstrate searchability, usability, reusability, composability and interoperability of digital content within the context of the existing legal framework while meeting from the early stage of the process the requirements of different target groups and markets in an increasingly multilingual and multicultural environment, and extending beyond mere localisation technologies.

These activities will exploit the benefits of enhancing digital content with machine‐understandable data (semantically well-defined metadata based on relevant descriptive terminology, vocabularies and ontologies).

The experiments will be conducted in thematic clusters. The gathering, dissemination and cross-sector fertilisations of gained knowledge will be an integral part of the experiments.

Target application areas are public sector information, spatial data, digital learning and cultural content, as well as scientific and scholarly digital content.

C.Reinforcing cooperation between digital content stakeholders and awareness

The activities to be carried out under this line of action include measures accompanying relevant legislation relating to digital content, and fostering increased collaboration between digital content stakeholders, as well as awareness building. These activities will support the development of benchmarking, monitoring and analysis tools, the impact assessment of the Programme and the dissemination of results. They will identify and analyse emerging opportunities and problems (e.g. trust, quality marking, intellectual property rights in education) and propose, as appropriate, solutions.


ANNEX II

The means for implementing the programme

1.The Commission will implement the Programme in accordance with the technical content specified in Annex I.

2.The Programme will be executed through indirect action comprising:

(a)shared-cost actions

(i)Projects designed to increase knowledge so as to improve existing products, processes and/or services and/or to meet the needs of Community policies. The Community funding will normally not exceed 50 % of the cost of the project. Public sector bodies may be reimbursed on the basis of 100 % of additional costs.

(ii)Best practice actions to spread knowledge. They will normally be conducted in thematic clusters and linked through thematic networks. The Community contribution for the measures set out under this point will be limited to direct costs deemed necessary or appropriate for achieving the specific objectives of the action.

(iii)Thematic networks: networks bringing together a variety of stakeholders around a given technological and organisational objective, so as to facilitate coordination activities and the transfer of knowledge. They may be linked to best practice actions. Support will be granted towards the additional eligible costs of coordinating and implementing the network. The Community participation may cover the additional eligible costs of these measures;

(b)accompanying measures

Accompanying measures will contribute to the implementation of the Programme or the preparation of future activities. Measures devoted to the commercialisation of products, process or services, marketing activities and sales promotion are excluded.

(i)Studies in support of the Programme, including the preparation of future activities.

(ii)Exchange of information, conferences, seminars, workshops or other meetings and the management of clustered activities.

(iii)Dissemination, information and communication activities.

3.The selection of shared-cost actions will be based on calls for proposals published on the Commission's Internet site in accordance with the financial provisions in force.

4.Applications for Community support should provide, where appropriate, a financial plan listing all the components of the funding of the projects, including the financial support requested from the Community, and any other requests for or grants of support from other sources.

5.Accompanying measures will be implemented through calls for tenders in accordance with the financial provisions in force.


ANNEX III

Indicative breakdown of expenditure

1.Facilitating at Community level access to digital content, its use and exploitation40 to 50 %
2.Facilitating improvement of quality and enhancing best practice related to digital content between content providers and users, and across sectors45 to 55 %
3.Reinforcing cooperation between digital content stakeholders and awareness8 to 12 %