They range from building a global ICT infrastructure that promotes trust and confidence to the research, development and broad take-up of novel IST solutions and practices aimed at empowering individuals, and enterprises in a sustainable global economy. The eEurope initiative therefore aims to accelerate the uptake of digital technologies across Europe and to ensure that all Europeans have the necessary skills to use them. The time horizon for research is generally 5 to 10 years . Research challenges in 2001 are to explore and validate novel solutions and practices for a global networked economy in which consumers, workers and enterprises can dynamically interact through a ubiquitous ICT infrastructure promoting trust and confidence. Key research and development requirements include novel architectures and solutions for interoperability, scalability, customisability, multilinguality and dependability, as well as user-centred designs.
Emphasis is on visionary research with high potential payoffs.
Key Action II will not fund short-term, incremental RTD efforts that are based on proprietary solutions and solely benefit participants in the project. A total of 11 Action Lines have been identified for Calls for Proposals in 2001. Enhancing Privacy and Securing Content . A new Action Line on Exploratory Research for 2010 is introduced to promote more visionary research . This is further summarised in Table 1.