Fostering EU-Latin America ICT Policy Dialogue

The international conference ‘Fostering EU-Latin America ICT Policy Dialogue: Paving the way to a more structured and intense Euro-Latin America ICT research cooperation’ will be an important forum for European and Latin-American ICT research stakeholders to discuss strategies to intensify cooperation in Information and Communication Technologies. It will bring together stakeholders from ICT research, industry and industry federations, decision-makers, European and Latin-American research and innovation funding agencies, as well as SMEs and large companies from each region interested in cooperation with Latin America and with Europe. The event is the concluding milestone of the FORESTA project aiming to boost the research dimension of ICT cooperation and policy dialogue between the EU and the Latin-American region. In the past two years the project has conducted consultation with industry, policy makers and other stakeholders of research and innovation cooperation and has organised high-level policy conferences in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. Studies, analysis and position papers in support of a Euro – Latin America coordinated strategy in ICT research have been produced. Building on these results and involving in the process other relevant initiatives in the international ICT cooperation, Fostering EU-Latin America ICT Policy Dialogue aims to deliver a set of joint strategic recommendations in support a reinforced EU-LA ICT cooperation. The recommendations shall be streamlined into a Joint Declaration to be presented to representatives of the European Commission, the European Parliament and of Latin-American governments in the closing session of the event to be held at the European Parliament.

Fostering EU-Latin America ICT Policy Dialogue: Paving the way to a more structured and intense Euro-Latin America ICT research cooperation’  has the two-fold objective of: disseminating lessons learned and recommendations which have been drawn up during the project on how to improve policy support to research and on how to stimulate the international dimension of ICT research; bringing together other projects, initiatives and stakeholders of the ICT international cooperation in order to follow up on FORESTA outputs and propose and design together the further steps to advance ICT policy dialogue and increase EU-LA cooperation for joint research projects.

The conference is organised in the framework of the FORESTA project, coordinated by the Brussels-based company TESEO, in cooperation with the EULARINET project. Within the different bi-regional and bilateral initiatives in place between Europe and America Latina, FORESTA (Fostering the REsearch Dimension of Science & Technology agreements) has the objective to advance policy dialogue in order to pave the way to a reinforced cooperation in ICT research. The main targets of FORESTA studies and recommendations are policy-makers and the actors in charge of designing and implementing research programmes like research and innovation agencies of EU Members States and Latin-American countries.
The EULARINET Project (European Union - Latin American Research and Innovation NETworks) is a 4 years Coordination Action (INCO.Net) whose main goal is to strengthen the bi-regional dialogue on S&T between EU Member States (Austria, France, Finland, Germany, Portugal and Spain), Associated States (Norway) and Latin-American Partner Countries (Argentine, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua and Uruguay) at policy, programme and institutional (research entities) level. Among other things, the projects promote the joint identification, setting up, implementation and monitoring of mutual interest priorities of future work programmes across the Specific Programmes of FP7.

In order to enlarge the impact of the conference outputs and have them validated by a comprehensive range of EU-LA wide as well as bilateral projects and schemes, many initiatives have been involved in the process that will contribute to and support the Joint Declaration.
FIRST : The FIRST project aims to extend the concept of European Technology Platforms to Latin America, by gathering strategic stakeholders from the different sectors included in the Future Internet, ICT Components and systems fields into one national ICT Technology Platform per country in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. The project has been successful in setting up of 5 Latin-American Technology Platforms that will be the privileged counterparts for ETPs in Latin America, facilitating an efficient networking and collaboration with the ultimate objective of promoting joint research initiatives between European and Latin American ICT organisations.
PRO-IDEAL Plus: The Pro-Ideal Plus project promotes the ICT dialogue and supports the ICT R&D cooperation between Europe and Latin America through on-line tools (ICT Wiki, training modules, partner search) and face-to-face events (ICT Days and ICT Fora). Furthermore, Pro-Ideal Plus has successfully trained "Project Angels" to create a sustainable support network in the Latin-American countries.
AMERICAS: The AMERICAS project has recently been launched – the project kick-off meeting is due to be held few days ahead of the FORESTA Brussels event –  and it is the EU-funded project in the ICT international cooperation that shall continue the mission to support and advance policy dialogue and EU-LA cooperation in ICT.

ENLACE is DG Research-supported projects that aim to strengthen bi-regional cooperation on science and technology issues between Europe and Central America. The project ENLACE aims at supporting the bi-regional dialogue between the EU and the Central America Countries and includes a set of activities to enhance the networking among EU and Central America researchers through the organization of S&T dialogues, to identify research priorities of mutual interest and to raise awareness on FP7 in Central America mainly by setting up the network of FP7 National Contact Point in Central America.

Fostering EU-Latin America ICT Policy Dialogue: Paving the way to a more structured and intense Euro-Latin America ICT research cooperation’ spans over two days and is structured into panel speeches and round tables.

The fist slot ‘Making the point on EU-LA ICT dialogue on R&D’ intends to provide the state of the art of the ICT policy dialogue between Europe and Latin America. The different initiatives (FORESTA under DG INFSO, EULARINET under DG RESEARCH) active in the international cooperation domain shall provide a comprehensive picture based on the EU-LAC policy dialogue milestones represented by the Senior Official Working Groups Meetings. The speakers are expected to provide food for thoughts to be developed by participants during the two-day Brussels event in order to raise issues and points to feed the process leading to the upcoming Seventh Bi-regional EU-LAC summit in Chile.
The following slot ‘Feeding EU-Latin America ICT R&D Cooperation: Best practices and initiatives of cooperation in research and innovation’ will discuss initiatives in support of a reinforced EU-LA cooperation in order to identify best practices that could be improved and replicated in the future: it will be a series of short presentations where each presenter is encouraged to extract lesson learned and successful results from their initiatives. Both regional cooperation initiatives and bilateral initiatives are considered in order to highlight how bilateral relations and agreements help foster cooperation at the level of project. In this respect, a slot is dedicated to research networks to deliver on the impact and the advancement of research networks to facilitate collaborative research with third countries.
The third slot ‘The priorities of the EU LAC Senior Officials ICT Working Groups and activities in other areas’ will focus on the four priorities of the EU-LAC Working Groups (Living Labs; e-Health; e-Inclusion; e-Infrastructures) and some extra horizontal topics and will feature a number of success cases of concrete research projects targeting these topics.

The afternoon session ‘The Joint Declaration to strengthen EU-LA RTD+i cooperation in ICT’ is structured into round tables and the discussion will run as follows: the moderator presents the recommendations that emerged from FORESTA activities (grid of technological priorities for joint EU-LA research, LA stakeholders’ suggestions for funding instruments, policy issues) and will trigger LA participants and their EU counterparts (researchers, industries, research and innovation agencies, government representatives and policy makers) to add their inputs and insights. The final output shall be the Joint Declaration made up of a number of recommendations aiming to help define a EU-LA coordinated strategy for funding to research and innovation.

The second day of the event will be held at the European Parliament to disseminate the outputs of the earlier day presenting the Declaration to the European institutions, namely European Commission officials, Members of the European Parliament active in the relations with Latin-American countries and in the commissions for cooperation, research and industry, as well as LA government representatives and the press. The agenda of the day at the European Parliament includes a webcast plenary session, press conferences, debates, interviews and bilateral meetings.

Download Agenda HERE

EC officials of DG INFSO and DG RTD; Members of the European Parliament; Innovation and research agencies from Europe and LAC; scientific attachés from LAC Embassies ; European and Latin-American ICT Technology Platforms; Joint Technological Initiatives; Federation of enterprises active in the LAC market; Chambers of Commerce; Initiatives for international cooperation in research; Managers of bilateral cooperation programmes; NCP’s; Ideal-IST; members of the Strategic Forum for International S&T Cooperation; ICT research community; ICT Industry; Media.

Studies developed under FORESTA project

National ICT policy analysis

Study on FP7 and other projects in international research

Study on national support mechanisms

Report on the status of ICT research cooperation

Strategic recommendations on key research priority issues

The position paper of the ICT Policy Dialogue Council

Other background documents

Final report of the Digital Agenda Assembly (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/documents/daa/daa11eu_final_report.pdf)

E-Inclusion:
- Inclusion.pdf 
- Independent_living.pdf
Useful links:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/index_en.htm
E-inclusion - in call 8

http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/cooperation?callIdentifier=FP7-ENERGY-SMARTCITIES-2012

FORESTA_A EU-LA ACTION TO FOSTER RESEARCH
http://www.forestaproject.eu/site2/media/Azzi/DAgenda/FORESTA_A EU-LA ACTION TO FOSTER RESEARCH.pdf

THE ICT POLICY DIALOGUE COUNCIL RECOMMENDATIONS
http://www.forestaproject.eu/site2/media/Azzi/DAgenda/THE ICT POLICY DIALOGUE COUNCIL RECOMMENDATIONS.pdf

D4.3_Concertaton_v8.2.pdf

Joint Declaration

Regisration is closed

DEAR PARTICIPANT, WE ARE VERY GLAD TO INFORM THAT EXPECTED ATTENDANCE TO THE CONFERENCE HAS REACHED SEATING CAPACITY. WE KEEP REGISTRATION OPEN BUT PLEASE CONSIDER THAT COMFORTABLE SEATING MIGHT BE NOT GUARANTEED TO LATE REGISTRATION.

1. Transport from the airport to the hotel

Participants are responsible for arranging the transportation from the airport to the hotel. Zaventem Brussels international airport is well connected with the center of Brussels. Connection is possible by bus or train or by taxi.

By train:
The airport train station is located below the terminal (basement level-1). Up to 4 trains per hour connect the airport to Brussels North, Brussels Central and Brussels Midi stations.
You can find information on the schedule of all Belgian and international train services on the Belgian Railways Website (Enter BRUXELLES NAT AIRPORT as departure station or destination)

By bus
The Airport Line is a 30-minute express service between Brussels Airport and the European quarter.
From Monday to Friday 8 pm the Airport Line carries the number 12 and serves the major stops.
On weekdays after 8 pm, on Saturday, Sunday and holidays the Airport Line carries the number 21 and serves all stops.
The bus station is located on level 0 -one floor down from the arrivals hall- and can be easily reached by using the escalators or elevators.
All MIVB/STIB buses depart from platform C. You can purchase a ticket before boarding the bus from the GO vending machine located on platform C.

By taxi
Licensed taxis are permanently available in front of the arrivals hall. The fare from the airport to the city centre of Brussels is around €45/50. Licensed taxis can be recognized by the blue and yellow emblem.

Taxi Green tel: 0032 (0)2 3494949
Taxi Bleus tel: 00 32(0)2 268 00 00

For further information please visit: http://www.brusselsairport.be/en/

2. Conference Venue

Day 1 – 28/11/2011 – Congress Centre Science 14 Atrium

Location: Science 14 Atrium, Rue de la Science 14/B, 1140 Brussels

Closest metro stops are: Maalbeek/Maelbeek (line 1/5) or Trône/Troon (line 2/6) or Arts loi/Kunst-wet (line 1/2/5/6).

For a detailed plan of all public transport connections go to http://www.stib.be/netplan-plan-reseau.html?l=en

Day 2 – 29/11/2011 – European Parliament

Location: European Parliament , rue Wiertz / Wiertzstraat 60, 104 Brussels

Closest metro stops are: Maalbeek/Maelbeek (line 1/5) or Trône/Troon (line 2/6)

For a detailed plan of all public transport connections go to http://www.stib.be/netplan-plan-reseau.html?l=en

Brussels Metro Map

3. Accommodation

Participants are responsible for arranging their accommodation.
Participants attending the event will find preferential rates in the following Hotels:

Hotel Silken Berlaymont
Address: Boulevard Charlemagne, 50, 1000 Brussels
Metro: Schuman (line 1/5)
Telephone: +32 2 285 41 86
Website: http://www.hoteles-silken.com/hotel-berlaymont-brussels/en/
To make your

The event achieved the challenging objective of bringing together several activities that have been undertaken in cooperation between Europe and Latin-American countries. Inspiring panels of experts from industry, government, academia, research as well as the European commission, presented their experiences, best practices and success cases looking for a concrete interaction and fruitful synergies with all presenters and participants. Different speakers and participants remarked the big opportunity that the event bringing together such a huge and articulated critical mass of stakeholders, totaling about 150 people coming from both shores of the Atlantic, represented for the ICT community interested in EU-LA research and innovation. 
Following the output and intense work and debates held on the first day of the event, strong policy messages were delivered the next day in an exceptional event location, the European Parliament, where such important momentum in the EU-LA cooperation framework was further highlighted. The technological talent and interest to cooperate from Latin America is indeed a fact:  in a meeting room of the European Parliament packed to capacity, Latin-America delegations from throughout the region could stage a brilliant and dynamic showcase of ideas, project presentations, and success stories of ICT and research in front of European research and industry stakeholders, European Commission officers and Members of the European Parliament.
Latin America is presenting a lot of opportunities for the European ICT community, demanding a step up of the EU-LA policy relations for Science & Technology cooperation towards a partnership of equals. This is one of the key recommendations described in the Joint Declaration that was presented to the conference stakeholders on the first day of the event and was subsequently received at the European Parliament by the European Commission representative Mr. Carlos Oliveira in the plenary session closing the event. Mr. Oliveira remarked the alignment of many points brought up in the document with the Commission directions, in particular of the IST Advisory Group (ISTAG), the working group set up to advice the Commission on the overall strategy in the IST thematic priority under the European Framework Programme. Furthermore, Mr. Oliveira expressed the commitment to take them into account in particular for what concerns international cooperation objectives.
The Joint Declaration is an evolving document. In your capacity as a stakeholder of the EU-LA international cooperation in ICT, we invite you to give your contribution and continue support and/or comment the Joint Declaration to advance the EU-LA ICT dialogue for research and innovation. 
Follow the Joint Declaration through this link:

http://www.forestaproject.eu/site2/declarations/joint_declaration

Download presentations of the event HERE

See Latin American projects and  technological capacities showcased at the European Parliament HERE

Download Press Release Day 1

Download Press Release Day 2

See INVITATION to the event HERE