Second IST call produces healthy response
The second call for proposals under the information society technologies (IST) section of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) has generated requests for over 4.1 billion euro of EU funding, almost eight times the amount available for the call. 1079 proposals were evaluated and 276 proposals, representing a total request of over 1 billion euro, have passed all eligibility and evaluation thresholds. The EU has allocated an indicative 525 million euro for this second call. The Commission intends to select projects for funding by mid to late February and to conduct negotiations with selected project managers during March, April and May. It is expected that all contracts will be finalised in time for projects to start in the summer of 2004. Morten Møller of the European Commission's Information Society DG, who manages IST evaluation operations, said that the second call generated a very good response from a number of different IST stakeholders. Projects worth 1.3 billion euro were proposed by industry, while 1.2 billion euro was requested by universities and colleges of higher education. Research organisations asked for 827 million euro and SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) proposed projects worth 700 million euro. The electronic submission procedure proved popular, with over half of proposals being submitted online. The Commission is now considering whether to make the next IST call the first all digital call under the EU Framework Programmes. Mr Møller says that DG Information Society will be discussing this internally with other Commission DGs, such as Legal Service. They hope to persuade all colleagues that the Internet is no barrier to accessing FP6 funding. As all respondents to calls for proposals have full access to the Internet, Mr Møller is confident that future IST calls will be all digital. The Commission is still working for an improvement in the proportion of female experts used in the evaluation process, according to Mr Møller. Of the 606 experts used, only 20 per cent were women - an improvement on the previous statistic of 17 per cent, but still well short of the Commission's overall target of 40 per cent for the Sixth Framework Programme. The areas covered by the second IST call include open development platforms, applications for mobile workers and users, embedded systems and advanced displays. Call 3 of the FP6 IST priority will be published in May 2004.