EPRI Newsletter 2006 - Issue 6

2nd EPRI workshop “Reconnecting Parliaments and citizens”
Following the message of the members’ conclusions of the last EPRI conference, the coming EPRI workshop will focus on examining national parliament’s agendas and strategies for reconnecting with citizens in the context of “e-government” developments. The question of how the European debate could be integrated into these plans will also be looked at. The workshop will draw together expertise and exchange experience on these questions, with a view to generating a common understanding of the challenges and opportunities which parliaments face today. As an output, this workshop aims to produce a draft parliamentary perspective on "dialogue and reconnection with citizens on domestic and European matters" – written up in the form of a post-workshop report. The 2nd workshop will be hosted in the framework of the Austrian Presidency of the EU. The workshop which will take place in Vienna on April 24th is set up in 3 sessions               

To get further information please do not hesitate to contact:

EPRI participating at IST for Africa
The EPRI knowledge project will be represented at the IST Africa conference which will take place in Pretoria from May 3-5, 2006. The IST Africa conference is part of the IST-Africa Initiative, which is supported by the European Commission under the IST Programme of FP6. IST-Africa 2006 is the first in an Annual Conference Series which will bring together delegates from commercial, government & research organisations across Africa and from Europe, to bridge the Digital Divide by sharing knowledge, experience, lessons learnt and good practice. The conference is open for registration at http://www.ist-africa.org/

EPRI Conference: Material available online
The summary of the 2006 EPRI conference in Prague is available on the EPRI web site. It includes the conference agenda, photos, and the summary of the conference as well as downloads of speeches and presentations.

IST NEWS

The Internet & Society 2006
Hitting on a winning combination of academic rigour and real-world application, the second edition of The Internet & Society conference promises to be every bit as informative as the first in 2004. The conference is organised by the UK’s Wessex Institute of Technology and Norway’s Bergen University. The aim of the event is to explore the technical, social, psychological and cultural implications of emerging information and communication technologies (ICT). Topics to be covered include technology-enhanced learning, eCommerce and eGovernance, data and information privacy issues, and gender roles in information technology. In attendance will be government policy-makers, academics, researchers and stakeholder groups such as NGOs.

The European e-Identity Conference
The European e-Identity Conference will focus on identity as a core enabler of today's e-business process. The current identity landscape envelops a wide range of business to business, business to consumer and government to citizen processes, with access from an infinite number of connections using multiple identities. More emphasis is now being placed on identity management in order to manage the security of an increasingly complex structure. The European e-Identity Conference aims to leave delegates with a comprehensive picture of the challenges of managing an effective identity management strategy, as well as the role and value of new technologies. The European e-Identity Conference will focus over two days on how we manage employee, citizen and public identities and will provide a mix of presentations, panel discussions, round tables and question and answer sessions. Key areas that the conference will focus on include (1) Managing identity, (2) Securing identity, (3) Electronic identity, e-ID cards and new technologies, (4) Federated identity (5) e-Provisioning and (6) Legislation and compliance issues. Further information available at: www.eema.org/static/eema2006/  

E-POLL: Electronic polling system for remote voting operations
E-POLL, which started in January 2004 and ended in June 2005, is an EU-sponsored project for a new form of voting, showed how districts can 'de-localise' their polling booths during five tests in Italy and France. The main innovations introduced by E-Poll concern the organization of voting processes. An important component of the E-Poll system is the European Virtual Ballot Network (EVBN) supporting the new voting process. The network is a functional system allowing communications in terms of information flows between administrative authorities at different levels. The project investigated mobile communications based on the GPRS standard for providing the E-Poll network with the required bandwidth and security. Thus, it becomes possible to use E-Poll kiosks anywhere, within a private, reliable and protected network. E-Poll provides a flexible platform allowing downscaling to Internet voting. The voter-recognition system is based on smart card or other token contact or contact-less, a fingerprint reader could be part of the kiosk and identification station, which performs voter recognition with absolute security. An ergonomic kiosk facilitates use by disabled people.


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