Rationale

ICT is critical to Eur^(o)pe's future and underpins the realisation of the Lisbon agenda. It has a catalytic impact in three key areas: productivity and innovation, modernisation of public services and advances in science and technology. Half of the productivity gains in our economies are explained by the impact of ICT on products, services and business processes. ICT is the leading factor in boosting innovation and creativity and in mastering change in value chains across industry and service sectors. ICT is essential to meeting the rise in demand for health and social care, in particular for people with special needs, including the ageing population, to modernising services in domains of public interest such as education, cultural heritage, security, energy, transport and the environment and to promoting accessibility and transparency of governance and policy development processes. ICT plays an important role in RTD management and communication and is catalytic in the advance of other fields of science and technology as it transforms the way researchers conduct their research, cooperate and innovate. The escalating economic and societal demands, together with the continued mainstreaming of ICT and the need to push further the limits of technology as well as to develop innovative high-value ICT-based products and services set a growing agenda for research. To bring technology closer to people and organisational needs means: hiding technology complexity and revealing functionality on demand; making technology functional, very simple to use, available and affordable; providing new ICT-based applications, solutions and services that are trusted, reliable, and adaptable to the users' context and preferences. Driven by the demand of more-for-less, ICT researchers are involved in a global race focussing on miniaturisation, mastering the convergence of computing, communications and media technologies, including further interoperability between systems and the convergence with other relevant sciences and disciplines, and building systems that are able to learn and evolve. From these diverse efforts a new wave of technologies is emerging. ICT research activities will also draw on a broader range of scientific and technological disciplines including bio- and life sciences, chemistry, psychology, pedagogy, cognitive and social sciences and the humanities. ICT is one the most research intensive sectors. The ICT research effort, public and private, represents a third of the total research effort in all major economies. Although Europe already enjoys industrial and technological leadership in key ICT fields it lags behind its major competitors in investment in ICT research. Only through a renewed and more intensive pooling of the effort at European level will we be able to make the most of the opportunities that progress in ICT can offer. ICT research activity based on the ‘open source’ development model is proving its utility as a source of innovation and increasing collaboration. The results of ICT research can take various exploitation paths and lead to various business models. The ICT research activities will be closely articulated with policy actions for ICT deployment and with regulatory measures within a comprehensive and holistic strategy. Priorities have been set following extensive consultations that included input from a series of European Technology Platforms and industrial initiatives in areas such as nano-electronics, microsystems, embedded systems, mobile and wireless communications, electronic media, photonics, robotics and software, services and grids, including Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). Sustainability issues will also be taken into account, particularly in the field of electronics.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-04 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.