Regional ICT Foresight exercise for Southeast European countries

The FORSEE project targeted ICT RTD policy reform in the South-eastern Europe (SEE) region, proposing a focused effort on introducing a Foresight culture in the region, which was necessary in order to accelerate target countries' socioeconomic growth on their way to matching the challenges of the global networked economy and participating on equal footing in the European Research Area.

The project introduced a sustainable mechanism for ICT Foresight, which was not yet regularly applied as a tool for technological future orientation and research policy review. The project partnership, comprising organisations responsible for policy making in ICT or Science and Technological Development, and ensured the institutional capacity and political commitment that was needed in order to implement this ambitious initiative. FORSEE's main objective was to identify the shortcomings of the ICT RTD sector in the region, and to orchestrate the establishment of a regional collaboration network, working on ICT Foresight, and exploring synergies and complementarities between research resources in the target countries. The project's efforts addressed regional stakeholders in the sector, and provided a participatory platform for collaboration in order to ensure that the outputs received wide acceptance and inspired the necessary sense of regional ownership.

One of the most important elements of the project was the hands-on approach in the implementation of pilot ICT Foresight exercises in all target countries based on a regional methodology adapted to the region's capacities and resources. Therefore, the project acknowledged that significant savings of resources could be achieved by implementing a regional foresight initiative, coupled by the strong collaboration potential that such an approach ensured.

Team:

• DI Dietmar Lampert (project leader)
• Magª. Pamela Bartar, MAS
• Magª. Elke Dall
• Dr. Alexander Degelsegger-Márquez
• Mag. Florian Gruber (on leave)
• Patricia Grygar
• Magª. Désirée Pecarz
• Erwin Rennert
• Mag. Dr. Klaus Schuch
• Magª (FH) Isabella E. Wagner, MA
• M.A. Gorazd A. Weiss
• Lisa Wimmer

Section: Research Policy & Development

Partners:

• Bulgarian Association of Software Companies
• Industrial System Institute
• Institute of Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Mihajlo Pupin Institute
• Ministry for Higher Education, Science and Technology of Slovenia
• Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Serbia
• Ministry of Education, Youth and Science of Bulgaria
• National Institute for R&D in Informatics - Romania
• University of Ljubljana
• University of Macedonia - Greece
• University of Montenegro
• General Secretariat for Research and Technology
• University of Patras (Coordinator)

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Tags: foresight, ICT, Southeast Europe