PRO-IDEAL PLUS organised an ICT Forum in Mexico, on 10 October 2011.
Report on the ICT Forum Mexico
The presentations of the Forum are:
- European Union; Support to the ICT Policy Dialogue. Yolanda Ursa, INMARK
- The GISELA project: ICT and e-infrastructures for R&D cooperation. Luis Trejo, Tecnológico de Monterrey.
- New opportunities for developing the ICT R&D collaboration between Europe and Latin America. Philippe Wacker & Margaretha Mazura, EMF
- Mexican Academic, Research and Technological development in ICT. Neil Hernández-Gress, ICT-NCP- Mexico
- Mexico-EU cooperation programs. Héctor Sámano, Director UEMEXCYT
- The Mexican Digital Agenda in ICT for Research and Technological Development. Carlos Patiño, Technical Secretary of the Special Commission for Digital Access of the Chamber of Parliament.
- Conclusions, Perspectives and final recommendations
Pictures:
About the ICT-Forum:
One of the main objectives of PRO-IDEAL PLUS project is to create and launch the PRO-IDEAL PLUS ICT-Forum in order to facilitate the introduction of ICT R&D dimension into the regular policy dialogues between the EU and Mexico, in such a way that ICT become a key issue within the broad range of topics addressed by the S&T policy dialogue events.
The ICT Forum acts as ICT a meeting point of stakeholders and is devoted to discuss the opportunities and challenges for FP7-ICT R&D cooperation between Europe and Mexico, and the role of ICT R&D as an enabler for growth, competitiveness and innovation.
Background Information
PRO-IDEAL PLUS aims at the promotion of the ICT policy dialogue in Latin America and the identification of ICT common research priorities between Europe and Latin America that are crucial for future R&D collaboration. PRO-IDEAL PLUS ICT Forum supports and facilitates the introduction of the ICT R&D dimension into the regular policy dialogue between EU-LAC.
The launch of the FP7 and ICT as its most doted priority places new emphasis on international R&D cooperation, which is increasingly seen as being at the centre of community policies. The opening of all FP7 areas to third-country participation underlines this approach. Science and technological development has always been an international endeavour, but the need for critical mass and large-scale infrastructure for advancing R&D in many areas increasingly call for strong international partnerships. ICT has also proved instrumental to enhancing and enriching many other policy areas and by now, is the key to almost all product chain developments and business processes.
In recent years the European Union and Latin America Region have paved the way for reinforced ICT cooperation through intensive exchange of views involving researchers, industry including SMEs and public decision-makers, and establishing a frame of bilateral ICT cooperation agreements with third countries through the EU-LAC summits that take place bi-annually.
Many Latin America countries have signed S&T agreements with the EU. These Agreements create a predictable institutional foundation for a wide variety of knowledge centred cooperation, amongst others cooperation in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT).
For the scientific, technological and industrial communities of all these target countries, the FP7-ICT programme represents a tremendous opportunity to participate as equal in common international projects alongside renown centres of excellence and European companies. However, expectations have not always been met and the participation of research institutions and companies, particularly SMEs, from the Latin America countries in the ICT programme is still lagging behind their potential.
ICT-Forum Objectives
The objective of the ICT Forum is to set up a platform for international cooperation between Latin America and Europe in the ICT field. The ICT Forum will be devoted to discuss:
- The relevance of S&T cooperation in the ICT field between Latin America and Europe.
- The opportunities to enhance Latin America participation in FP7-ICT R&D cooperation projects.
- The role of ICT R&D as an enabler for growth, competitiveness and innovation.
- Key ICT R&D priorities for international cooperation.
Mexico’s ICT R&D priorities
Following the PRO-IDEAL-PLUS ICT priority survey findings (June 2010), and ordered according to their importance in the country, the top 10 Research priorities in Mexico are:
1. Future Networks
2. Technology Enhanced Learning
3. ICT for efficient water resources management
4. Intelligent Information Management
5. ICT systems for energy efficiency
6. ICT solutions for governance and policy modelling
7. Smart Energy Grids
8. ICT for access to cultural resources
9. Trustworthy ICT
10. Computing Systems
Furthermore the Great Challenges (GC) presented by the National Thematic Network in ICT (RED-TIC-CONACYT), which could lead to a significant progress of ICT R&D, are shown below:
GC1) Relevant information for decision making
GC2) ICT for biomedicine: National Health Improvement
GC3) ICT and education in the XXI century
GC4) Security and transparency of information and services
GC5) Intelligent Environments for problems of large cities
GC6) Knowledge-based services for citizens
The PI+ survey results have been discussed during the Round Table held in Mexico City on May 24th of 2011 and led, according to the opinion of the participants, to the following ICT priority areas for Mexico:
1. Cloud Computing and Internet of Services.
2. Safety and healthcare record information reuse.
3. New paradigms for embedded systems, monitoring and control towards complex systems engineering.
4. Knowledge-based services for citizens (Point GC6, not in the survey).
Out of the top ten ICT priorities the Round Table participants validated the following five as the most important Mexican ICT priorities:
1. Future Networks (Challenge 1)
2. Cloud Computing, Internet of Services and Advanced Software Engineering (Challenge 1)
3. New paradigms for embedded systems, monitoring and control towards complex systems engineering (Challenge 3)
4. Computing Systems (Challenge 3)
5. Intelligent Information Management (Challenge 4)
