Success of third IMPACT information day
Some 600 requests for participation and over 1000 demands for proceedings and other documentation were received following the announcement of the third IMPACT Information Day which took place in Luxembourg on 22 January 1993. This steep rise in interest since the November 1991 event (an increase of 140% in requests for attendance) underlines the economic importance of information and the essential role played by a Community information services market in strengthening the wider Single Market. Through its central theme of INFO EURO ACCESS (improvement of accessibility of information at the European level for all interested parties) the Community programme of Information Market Policy Actions, IMPACT 2, aims to respond to the emerging needs of the changing information market. The four action lines of IMPACT 2 comprise: - Improving the understanding of the market with the help of an Information Market Observatory (IMO); - Overcoming legal and administrative barriers with the support of a Legal Advisory Board; - Increasing user-friendliness and improving information literacy via the creation of a decentralized network of National Awareness Partners and the central support of the European Commission Host Organization (ECHO); - Supporting strategic information initiatives through cost-shared projects with industry. Subjects of the January 1993 information day included: - Information market development within the Community, the predominance of national market operators, and the technical, legal and linguistic barriers to be overcome in order to further stimulate Common Market developments; - Details on IMPACT 2 strategic information initiatives, in particular the June 1992 call for proposals in the area of interactive multimedia information services, which resulted in over 300 replies involving a total of some 1160 organizations throughout the EEC. These included strong participation from SMEs and from the Community's less favoured regions. A second call for proposals was launched in December 1992 (closing date 1 March 1993) for information services based on Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Already over 1600 information packages have been dispatched to interested organizations in this area. - A presentation of the results of four IMPACT 1 projects. These were TECDOC (an image bank project in the car manufacturing industry involving five Member States, which has also attracted the attention of sectors including aerospace, information technology, and shipbuilding ), EUROSTAND-SGML (a valuable advance towards the consistent preparation of technical documents plus facilitation of the use of the information they contain, with the development of a document type definition and a common content model covering both text and graphics, proposed as international and European standards), the International Contract System (building on a computerised trading system for road haulage, enhancing the existing information service by electronic replacement of paper contracts and making communication more efficient and language-independent, as well as providing a number of additional features) and HYPP (the Hypermedia System for Plant Protection Information consisting of an image bank with added value integration of hypermedia features and problem-solving capabilities for the diagnosis of plant diseases and deficiencies, and offering photographic images, drawings and texts which can be linked by associative techniques). The presentations were followed by discussion and comment, with demonstrations of the pilot projects given by the main contractors. The Information Market (IM) Guide was also available for demonstration, providing an inventory of electronic information products (databases, CD-ROMs, CD-Is etc.) plus information on their producers, hosts, and European brokers. The IM Guide exists in all nine official Community languages, in both online and printed form.