The European Commission has recently opened a call for the provision of services for the implementation of the Global Inventory Project (GIP). The Chair's conclusions of the G7 Ministerial Conference on the Information Society, held in Brussels in February 1995, recognised the impact interactive applications will have on society. They are committed, amongst other things, to sharing experiences on emerging applications. Therefore it was decided that an inventory of major applications could provide knowledge of new and emerging employment sectors and that information on impediments to the realisation and dissemination of new applications will be exchanged.
It was also decided to promote eleven joint projects to demonstrate G7 commitment. One of these projects - the Global Inventory Project - has been assigned to the EC Information Society Project Office (ISPO). The main goal of the GIP pilot project is to create and provide an internet-based multimedia inventory of information regarding significant national and international projects, studies and other initiatives relevant to the promotion and the development of the global information society. An assessment of social, economic and cultural factors impacting on the development of the information society will also be undertaken.
The GIP will be a decentralised system with centralised indexing and directory services. It will be based upon World Wide Web (WWW) technologies and use a variety of tools that are easy to use and commonly available in all G7 countries. The participating countries will either produce their own separate national server or their data will be held in an area assigned to them on the GIP host. Each of the national inventories will be a self-contained unit, with indexing and local search capabilities. These indexes will be combined on the GIP host to create a truly global index of information society projects. A common home page will be created in the languages of all G7 countries.
It is planned that the Global Inventory Project will act as an international point of reference for the provision of information that will assist in the promotion of the information society at national and international levels. It will establish a network for the free exchange of information about national and international initiatives relating to the information society (the Electronic Forum). It also has the objective to promote and gain an understanding of the impact of the implementation of the information society activities on the economy, industry and society. Although initially involving the G7 countries it is planned to gradually expand involvement to non-G7 countries.
The actual call for tenders submitted by the EC involves seven interrelated tasks including defining user requirements; preparing functional specifications of the GIP system; system engineering and design; installation, customising of software and testing. Other tasks involve preparing measures to enable the participation of non-G7 countries in the GIP; assistance with the collection of significant projects, studies and other information society initiatives within the EU and awareness raising activities.
The principles guiding the implementation of the GIP include ease of use for the user and using off-the-shelf software and hardware which may only require minor customisation. It is expected that the centralised indexing and directory services located on the GIP Host will to a large extent be maintained automatically by special software tools like "web crawlers" and "intelligent agents". Searching will also be possible in any language.
It is likely that this work will be completed by early 1997 and should contain some valuable sources of information about developments in using telematics in education and training. In addition, all the resources should provide a useful reference library for those studying the impact of the development of the Information Society.
For further information contact:
The Commission of the European Communities,
Information Society Project Office (ISPO),
FAO of the ISPO Secretariat,
BU 24 2/78, 200 Rue de la Loi,
B-1049 Brussels, Belgium
Tel +32 2 296 8800
Fax +32 2 299 4180