Commission selects 30 new eTEN projects
The European Commission has selected a total of 30 new eTEN projects to receive funding to the tune of €45 million over the next three years - with the aim of leveraging €95 million in further investments. The projects will validate and deploy electronic services in the areas of health, government administration, education, e-inclusion, small and medium sized enterprise (SME) support, and security. The eTEN Community programme (2000-2006) supports the deployment of telecommunications-based services (e-services) with a trans-European dimension. The programme is part of the Commission's i2010 initiative, which aims to promote an open and competitive digital economy and emphasise information and communication technologies (ICT) as a driver of inclusion and quality of life. The projects will be the last to receive funding under eTEN. From 2007 onwards, support to electronic services in areas of public interest will be provided by the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP), a component of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP), which will run until 2013. Since its inception, the eTEN programme has funded many successfully deployed services. Examples include ePoll, an electronic voting and polling system that is being piloted in three Member States, and Netc@rds, a project preparing the electronic phase of the European Health Insurance Cards which is expanding to cover 300 hospitals in 15 countries. Another success story is the MICHAEL project, which has developed an electronic system to access, manage and update existing digital records of 13 national collections - including museum objects, archaeological and tourist sites, music and audiovisual archives, biographical materials, documents and manuscripts.