Polish-German eGovernment Research Base

CHALLENGES

The process of reorganising Eastern- and Middle Europe with the accession of the new EU member states creates for these countries the opportunity to renew outdated and inadequate economic and administrative structures and to exchange obsolete technologies on all economic sectors against modern and innovative infrastructures. On many economic fields and particularly in eGovernment the new situation offers the occasion to the new EU member states of eastern and middle Europe to transform the research potential developed in eGovernment projects into products and prototypes, and thus become the motor of innovation throughout the whole region. By consequent application of modern eGovernment technologies the acceding countries can become an example to Germany and the “old” Europe.

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GOALS

The project aims at the establishment of a Polish-German research base as a scientific network for research and development of interoperable IT-structures. Moreover six scientific teams were constituted for the development of future eGovernment scenarios.

They  concentrate on the subjects: interoperability, test-environments, legal knowledge-based systems, next generations network, eDemocracy, and pan-European eGovernment. Alongside an eGovernment Lab as a real-life test-environment, and a program for systematic inclusion of industrial partners was established.

The bilateral research base is the starting point for an East-European science-forum. The results will flow into publications and conferences. The associated eGovernmnet Lab serves to demonstrate the scenarios in order to evaluate and present solutions and research potentials and to increase the visibility of the research base.

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TECHNOLOGY

The federal structures on all administrational levels in Europe, combined with a decentralised decision-taking authority concerning the application of information and communication technologies, have led to a great number of heterogeneous closed IC-systems. Therefore all applications and web-based services in administrations lack interoperability. The technology doesn’t fulfil the open standards developed by international organisations for standardisation as the Object Management Group (OMG). Yet the so called interoperability of eGovernment solutions meaning the media break-free exchange of data within and between organisations is of crucial importance to administrations, enterprises working with administrations, and for the developer of eGovernment software products. It is scientifically undisputed that the long-term integration of services and the installation of inter-organisational electronic service-processes can be realised best with open standards and service-oriented architectures. Future eGovernment technologies will be based on open standards and will have to consider the criteria of interoperability.

Especially in the course of the European unification the international aspect of the problem becomes evident. Definitions of data structures are to be seen in a wider international context. European requirements will influence the standardisation. European services for eGovernment demand pan-European definitions for all aspects of interoperability, data-structures, and all processes. The internationally distributed data-flow and the underlying structures have to be analysed, specified, and defined to be able to identify open standards. This will be the task of the Polish German eGovernment research base.

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PARTNERS

•  Polish Competence Center for eGov and eEdu    PCC

•  Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre (PL)    PSNC

•  Fraunhofer FOKUS Berlin (D)  FhI FOKUS

•  Foundation for Economic Education (PL)   FEE

•  Technische Universität Berlin (D)   TU Berlin

•  Katedra Technologii Informatycznych (PL)   KTI AE

The project is financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.