Commission seeks external monitor for innovation publications
The European Commission has issued an invitation to tender relating to the external monitoring, quality of service and user feedback for online services and printed publications. Category of service, description and estimated budget of services: Monitoring, quality assessment and user feedback of information services and products, both electronic (CORDIS) and paper-based (CORDIS focus, Euroabstracts, Innovation & Technology Transfer) including suggestions for their evolution. CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Service (http://cordis.europa.eu(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)) set up and published on the Internet by the European Commission's Innovation-SMEs Programme, is a service designed to assist researchers and small and medium sized enterprises by providing information on a vast range of research and development and innovation activities at European level. At the same time, it keeps the European research community up to date on the implementation of Community Framework Programmes for research and technological development. 'Innovation & Technology Transfer', 'CORDIS focus' and 'Euroabstracts' are paper-based information dissemination products managed by the Innovation Directorate. Their objective is to communicate information on the work and results of the Innovation-SMEs Programme and to discuss and report on the European Union's innovation policy and activities, and on the latest news in EU research and technological development. These three publications are paper-printed, but exist in parallel as online magazines on the CORDIS web server, see http://cordis.europa.eu/innovation-smes/src/publicat.htm(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie). The Innovation Directorate intends to avail itself a new service. This is the external monitoring of the above information dissemination products and services. The objective is to evaluate their performance and results against their core objectives, to assess their quantitative and qualitative impact and to collect and analyse the feedback from users. For the purpose of objectivity and independence, the evaluator and the evaluee must be clearly distinct. Therefore any organisation that has direct and/or indirect legal and/or commercial links or interests (since January 2001) with those companies, whose services and products are the object of the monitoring, i.e. Intrasoft Int. SA (CORDIS), ECOTEC (CORDIS-focus) and European Service Network (Euroabstracts, Innovation & Technology Transfer), will be excluded from the bidding. It must be stressed that for the same purpose, the future contractor for this monitoring will be excluded from the future tendering procedure for the above services and products. The estimated annual budget is around euro 500,000.For further information, please contact: European Commission Directorate-General Enterprise Unit C/4 Jean Monnet Building L-2920 Luxembourg Fax +352 4301 32084 Or alternatively, consult the following web address: http://cordis.europa.eu/innovation-smes/calls/tender.htm(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)