Latest News
- NEWS ARTICLE
- Submissions open for the European Commission's 3rd Access City Award, recognising accessible and age-friendly urban environments - deadline 5 September 2012
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(22 August 2012) The European Commission has launched the third edition of the Access City Award, which recognises and celebrates cities with over 50,000 inhabitants implementing exemplary initiatives to improve accessibility in the urban environment. The Award is part of the EU's wider effort to create a barrier-free Europe: improved accessibility brings lasting economic and social benefits to cities, especially in the context of demographic ageing. Approximately 80 million EU citizens have a disability. With the ageing of our society, the number of people with a disability or those with reduced mobility is growing. Providing everyone access to city transport, public spaces and services and technology has become a real challenge. However, providing accessibility also gives economic and social benefits and contributes to the sustainability and inclusiveness of the urban environment. Initiatives presented to the competition will be assessed by the jury for their integrated approach across four key areas: the built environment and public spaces; transportation and related infrastructure; information and communication, including new technologies (ICT); public facilities and services. The jury will particularly look at the impact of accessibility measures on the everyday life of people with disabilities and the city as a whole, and it will consider the quality and sustainability of the results achieved. Cities will also have to demonstrate active involvement of persons with disabilities and their representative organisations in the planning and implementation of the city's accessibility policies. Cities with over 50,000 inhabitants from across Member States can submit their applications online until 5 September 2012.
- CALL FOR PROPOSALS
- Challenge 5 under ICT Call 10: ICT for Health, Ageing Well, Inclusion and Governance
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(Deadline: 15/01/2013) Challenge 5 builds on the previous research activities on health, ageing, inclusion, and governance. It aims to support innovation and activities closer to the market like pre-commercial procurement actions and platforms supporting social innovation. The focus will be on development of solutions that empower the individual, in a social context, to improve and manage personal life as a citizen, elderly, patient, consumer, civil servant or worker. The "ICT for Health activities" will address the "health management" continuum from lifestyle to disease management and the research in the computational modelling of human patho-physiology. The "ICT for Ageing and Independent Living" activities will focus on empowering people with age related dependencies or disabilities to live independently. "ICT for smart and personalised inclusion", will focus on the development of accessible solutions for personalised interfaces to smart environments and innovative services. Research in "ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling" will address collaborative governance supported by ICT tools empowering citizen and increasing transparency in decision making. A new activity will support collaborative, collective awareness ICT platforms for grassroots social innovation towards a more sustainable future.
- EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT
- ICT Proposers' Day 2012: Registration now open
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26 September 2012 - 27 September 2012 Warsaw, Poland
It is now possible to register to this two days event which will offer a networking platform to build quality partnerships for participating in the new ICT Work Programme for 2013. Presentation of project ideas, first-hand information from European Commission officials, guidance on how to submit a successful proposal and much more will be provided during the event. The on-line networking features, now available on the event's website, allow participants to log on to the website, create their profiles, find out about WP objectives with the possibility to leave comments, submit or browse presentations, find out about project ideas and start networking with other proposers.
- NEWS ARTICLE
- Last call for the European Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations Awards
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(27 June 2012) As part of the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations 2012, the European Commission is launching the European Year 2012 Awards in order to celebrate organisations and individuals that promote active ageing through their activities. Have a look and participate.
- CALL FOR TENDERS
- e-Skills: monitoring and benchmarking policies and partnerships
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(Deadline: 28/09/2012) The goals of this service contract are to monitor key indicators and scenarios on the supply and the demand of e-skills and to benchmark national policy initiatives and multi-stakeholder partnerships in the European Union (and based on this analysis, to understand better the impact of the initiatives launched at EU and national level), to propose new approaches to remedy the situation and to identify better ways to foster multi-stakeholder partnerships to reduce e-skills shortages, gaps and mismatches.
- CALL FOR TENDERS
- e-Skills: European guidelines and quality labels for new curricula
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(Deadline: 28/09/2012) The goal of this service contract is to develop European guidelines and quality labels for new curricula fostering e-leadership skills based on market needs and best practices including industry led initiatives. The guidelines and quality labels should be compatible with the European quality assurance reference framework for vocational education and training. A pilot demonstration of the implementation of the proposed European guidelines and quality labels should be organised as well as a dissemination campaign.
- CALL FOR TENDERS
- e-Skills: the international dimension and the impact of globalisation
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(Deadline: 28/09/2012) The objective of this service contract is to study the international dimension of the e-skills strategy (especially the efforts to promote ICT professionalism) and to assess the impact of globalisation on high-level e-skills requirements (ICT practitioners' skills and e-leadership skills), as well as to analyse major policy initiatives and best practices in the world. This should help to understand better the international dimension of e-skills in order to better anticipate change, envisage possible future cooperation and improve efforts to develop e-skills for Europe.
New in the Library
- ARTICLE
- Category finalist of the 2012 e-inclusion awards: Rosanna Nazir and Nila Sari of World Smart College/Vrouwen aan het Werk
Rosanna Nazir of Vrouwen aan het Werk (VAHW) – Women at Work developed a four-month long project for 10 women who were looking to find a job in Amsterdam, but she had a dream to help more people. She wrote a bid "World Smart College" for a competition run by IBM and won a US $10,000 grant. Together with volunteers and prospective students she started to develop the project – finding support from 100 volunteers at Cisco, IBM and the University of Applied Science of Amsterdam. The school started in November 2011, with three areas of study, project management, event management and ICT. Among the first 50 students was Nila Sari. Nila Sari is an Indonesian living in Amsterdam who has directly benefitted from the work of Rosanna Nazir and the World Smart College. Due to personal circumstances, Nila was isolated from the outside world for three years. She then joined the VAHW foundation and became one of the founding volunteers who helped to build the World Smart College. Now, thanks to the skills she has built through her involvement with World Smart College she has already started a traineeship with IBM in the Smarter Cities department. Her role involves assessing how digital media help to engage citizens in a Smarter City. She will be looking to ensure citizens become informed, involved, and inspired members of society. See also: World Smart College
- ARTICLE
- 2012 e-inclusion awards finalist: Marek Sikora of Eye-T.cz
Marek Sikora has been visually impaired since the age of 14. Through a visually impaired friend, he became interested in digital skills and together they obtained the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) certificate, eventually becoming fully ECDL certified in the spring of 2010. Marek Sikora with Mr Seymour This inspired Marek to make sure that the benefits of ICT certification and skills are available to other visually impaired people, so he became the first visually impaired ECDL tester in the Czech Republic. This enabled him to impart the necessary skills and certification to others. Marek established a not-for-profit organisation called Eye-T.cz, which makes ICT skills tests accessible to visually impaired people in the Czech Republic. The establishment of Eye-T.cz has enabled Marek to share his own experience with ICT and the opportunities that becoming digitally proficient can bring to the everyday lives of visually-impaired persons. In recognition of the added-value and opportunities that ICT training and certification can bring to visually-impaired people, Eye-T.cz was officially accredited as an educational institution by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in the Czech Republic in December 2010. Marek is a digital activist and in addition to his work with Eye-T.cz, he has a personal website on which he shares information and stories about himself and his work. His motto is "We can perceive the essentials through the heart, and for the rest we have zeros and ones." See also: Eye-T.cz
- AUDIOVISUAL
- FATE Project Video - Fall Detector for the Elder
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3 August 2012
The ultimate goal of FATE - FAll DeTector for the Elderly project is to widely validate an innovative and efficient ICT-based solution focused on improving the elder's quality of life by an accurate detection of falls in ageing people, both at home and outdoors. This will be done by implementing an accurate, portable and usable fall detector that runs a complex and specific algorithm to accurately detect falls, and a robust and reliable telecommunications layer based in ZigBee and Bluetooth technologies, capable of sending alarms when the user is both inside and outside the home. The system will be complemented by secondary elements such as a bed presence sensor or the i- Walker, an intelligent robotic walker, with the entire system ensuring successful prevention and detection of falls in all circumstances. The system will be tested and validated in 3 pilot studies involving real living scenarios, one in each of 3 different EU countries (Spain, Italy and Ireland), in close collaboration with the relevant public authorities (regional authorities in Spain, municipalities in Italy and National authorities in Ireland). For the sake of an efficient and significant validation, the pilot test will select 175 individuals with high risk of falling. The project is partially funded under the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme by the European Community.
See also: Website of the FATE Project
- POLICY AND LEGISLATION
- The EU Contribution to Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations
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10 August 2012
The "EU Contribution to Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations" is a comprehensive document which sets out what the European Union is doing to encourage active ageing. Released within the frame of the European Year 2012, the 24-page brochure presents the EU's efforts regarding the active ageing agenda, showing that it is a strong partner in this regard. The main tools to support active ageing are in the hands of policymakers in the Member States. However, the EU can mobilise a wide range of policy instruments to support national governments and other stakeholders in their efforts. Hence, the brochure covers existing measures at EU level, but also looks at others that are still being discussed, such as legislation in the pipeline and proposals for funding programmes in the new 2014-20 budget cycle. The overall aim is to inspire more determined efforts in all Member States to promote active ageing, thereby ensuring that solidarity between generations can withstand the test of population ageing. The European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations 2012 provides an opportunity to think about what we can do to make active ageing a reality and to commit to new initiatives in the years to come.
- POLICY AND LEGISLATION
- Demography, active ageing and pensions - Social Europe guide - Volume 3
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23 August 2012
The Social Europe guide is a bi-annual publication aimed at providing to an interested but not necessarily specialized audience a concise overview of specific areas of EU policy in the field of employment, social affairs and inclusion. It illustrates the key issues and challenges, explains policy actions and instruments at EU level and provides examples of best practices from EU Member States. It also presents views on the subject from the Council Presidency and the European Parliament. The third volume in this series gives an overview of the main demographic trends faced by Europe, such as ageing, a decrease in the working age population and declining fertility. It describes the EU's actions to promote active ageing, and explains EU policy efforts to ensure adequate, safe and sustainable pensions for the decades to come. This publication is available in English, French and German.
- REPORTS AND STUDIES
- Digital Competence in practice: An analysis of frameworks
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23 August 2012
With the 2006 European Recommendation on Key Competences, Digital Competence has been acknowledged as one of the 8 key competences for Lifelong Learning by the European Union. Digital Competence is a transversal key competence which enables acquiring other key competences (e.g. language, mathematics, learning to learn, cultural awareness). This report is part of a project on Digital Competence (DIGCOMP), launched by JRC-IPTS IS Unit under an Administrative Agreement for DG Education and Culture with an objective to contribute to better understand and develop Digital Competence in Europe. The report also contributes to the second work package of the project, by mapping and analyzing case studies where Digital Competence is being developed, acquired, and assessed or certified.
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