Western Balkan Countries’ ICT Idea Competition

Six lucky applicants have won a trip to the ICT 2010 Event in Brussels!

Since 2008, Western Balkan countries (WBC) have been full members to the EU’s Framework Programmes, but their actual involvement still leaves a lot to be desired. There is a widespread perception that substantial Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) research potential exists in the WBC, which is not well represented in the FP7 ICT Programme.

Projects such as ICT-WEB-PROMS and WINS-ICT, financed by the European Commission, are investing in a campaign to overcome inherent barriers and shortcomings that inhibit more active participation of WBC researchers in EU-funded programmes. Therefore, we invited you to participate in our “WBC ICT Research Competition”, providing an opportunity for WBC researchers in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to present their expertise and their ideas to the EU’s research community.

Six successful candidates have now been selected to travel next September to the conference “ICT 2010” in Brussels, the major European event for ICT research and policy, where they will be awarded during a special event and have the opportunity to present their idea, thus gaining significant publicity and networking potential.

The six winners are:

The competition was open to anybody carrying out research or development in the ICT area who has forward looking research ideas. These could be researchers or developers from research institutions, NGOs, administrations or companies based in the WBC.

The main data of the competition was as follows:

Ideas were expected from Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, F.Y.R. of Macedonia, Kosovo/UNMIK 1244/99, Montenegro and Serbia.

1. Content of the idea:

• General contact information
• Short CV of the proposer including publications
• Short organization profile
• Idea description

2. Evaluation criteria:

1. Eligibility (must be submitted by a Western Balkan organization from the countries listed under point 1. above)
2. Competence of applicant for the realization of the idea
3. Clarity of description
4. Innovation and relation to the state of the art
5. Feasibility and realizability (is it realistic?)
6. Applicability of the idea
7. Relevance to the ICT work programme

The eligibility criterion was an on/off one. All the criteria a) to g) were evaluated on a scale of 0 (no response to this criterion) to 5 (excellent). Maximum points are thus 30. There is a cut off threshold set at 18. All ideas that get a score above 18 were considered for the prize.

3. Winners of the competition:

The six best ideas are awarded participation to the ICT 2010 event in Brussels. These six consist of the highest scoring ideas from each WBC, or in case of countries with no idea with a score of 18 or more, the best of the second choices in the other WBC were selected.

4. Award:

Conference fees, travel from the WBC capital to Brussels and hotel costs will be covered by the ICT-WEB-PROMS project. In addition, the ICT-WEB-PROMS partners will support the winners in writing a proposal or be included in a proposal to FP7/ICT.

5. Important dates:

For further information please contact ICT-WEB-PROMS coordinator Ira Vater at ira.vater(at)ebanet.eu, or your ICT-WEB-PROMS contact point in your country.

Contact details are as follows:

The ICT-WEB-PROMS Consortium