Information Society Promotion in Baltic States (IST4Balt)

Alexey Gvishiani, Vice-president of CODATA, Chair of Russian National CODATA Committee, Director of Geophysical Centre RAS, Russia

The project "Information Society Promotion in Baltic States (IST4Balt)" is a Coordination Action for the FP6 IST Priority. IST4Balt is a follow-up of the FP5 IST project "E-working as a Tool for Information Society Technologies Programme Promotion to Baltic States (TELEBALT)", 2001-2003.

The main goal of the project is to promote the FP6 IST Priority to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia by implementing fast dissemination and awareness actions targeted on these EU New Member States (NMS).
IST4Balt will do technology studies and market review of the present situation with the IST in the three Baltic countries and provide (through IST4Balt Web-sites, News Journal, workshops, conferences and training course) relevant information and formulate appropriate recommendations to EU research and marketing telematics communities.

The project will select and demonstrate IST developed services and tools following IST Strategic Objectives.
A system of three Information Dissemination Centers (IDCs) will be developed by the project (one IDC in each participating country). A system of IST4Balt Web-sites will be developed focused on particular application areas. Three issues of IST4Balt News Journal will be published yearly electronically and in hard copies.

The project will co-organize major international Baltic ICT events - three INFOBALT-IST4Balt conferences in Vilnius in October 2005-2007, three Baltic IT&T-IST4Balt conferences in Riga in April 2005-2007, and organize special IST training day inside the conference "Logistics and information technologies in international trade" in Tallinn in December 2005.

The project will organize seven IST4Balt technical/training workshops (six goal oriented technical workshops at the time of the conferences in Vilnius and Riga, and a training workshop in Kohtla-Jarve, Estonia). The workshops will be devoted to the promotion of the FP6, FP7 and the IST. They will show new FP6 opportunities for the Baltic countries and will contribute to launching IST project proposals.

IST4Balt will provide training measures on the IST and the FP6, demonstrating new intellectual, technical, educational and business opportunities for Baltic States as the EU NMS.

The project will initiate the creation of Trans-Baltic IST Association that will unite the IST4Balt participants with leading ICT organizations in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The association will coordinate joint efforts of the Baltic States in IST development focusing on integration to the EU.

IST4Balt started in September 2004 and has the duration of 40 months.



Keywords: information, innovations, e-work