Roberto Cencioni

European Commission

DG CONNECTCommunications Networks, Content & Technology

Media & Data

Zagreb, 30 November 2012

• the European Union brings together 500 million people speaking many languages…

half of the EU adult population don’t speak English

no such thing as a digital lingua franca since the advent of the social Web, smartphones, e-readers…

• EU policy framework: "Digital Agenda for Europe"

build a digital single market where content & services can flow freely

support cross-border exchanges between public services

ease business internationalisation, esp. SMEs

… but what if you don’t understand what's being displayed?

EC has supported Language Technologies & Applications since 1980s

• a fresh start since 2008

renewed political commitment

explosion of online content, esp. social networks

sizeable industry of ICT-based language services

a powerful enabler for next-generation ICT

• approx 150 M funding in the last 5 years

• nearly 60 projects underway

• two calls for project proposals open until mid-Jan

e

main themes of our projects

“… effective solutions that support business and inter-personal communication and enable people to make sense of online content and services in Europe's many languages.”

• global content processing, eg automated translation

• mining of unstructured information, eg text analytics

• natural interaction, eg speech understanding & dialogue

in and between multiple languages

main features of our projects

• multi-party, multi-nation partnerships

• academia + industry + "launching" users

• focus on generic enabling technologies

• emphasis on impact

target groups, application scenarios, demonstrators

good mix of research & commercial players

significant involvement of SMEs

• research: META projects (2010-2013) a unifying vision & agenda

pooling & reuse of basic data & software resources

assessing the "digital readiness" of individual languages

mobilisation & networking at (trans-)national level

• business: LT-INNOVATE (2012-2014)

global forum for commercial developers & vendors

promote innovation, stimulate take-up, overcome non-technical barriers

• public sector: promote the use of LT by our own institution (on-going) new EC machine translation service; inter-service group

with major departments

current state of play:

• completing the current programme (2012-13)

• preparing the new programmes (2014-20)

research & innovation

infrastructure

last series of calls under the current programme:

FP7 ICT Work Programme, Challenge 4 – Digital Content & Languages

approx 40 M, closing mid-January 2013

• Call–10, research, WP objective 4.1:

content analytics

machine translation

multimodal interaction

• SME-DCA Call, innovation, WP objective 4.3:

"industrialisation" of promising technologies

first-use validation & exploitation channels

Upcoming

Horizon 2020 (2014-2020)

• research & innovation; EC proposal: 80 B of which ~20% for ICT; 3 pillars:

excellent science (incl. Future & Emerging ICT Technologies)

industrial leadership (incl. 6 ICT themes of which one on information / content / data / language)

societal challenges (eg health, energy, transport…)

• on-going discussions with Council & EP

outcome depends on concomitant discussion of MFF (= multi-year EU budget)

• initial concrete orientations by spring 2013

draft work programme, 2014-2015 operations

choice of instruments, indicative budget breakdown

CEF – Connecting Europe Facility (2014-2020)• pan-European, public-interest infrastructures a-la-TEN

emphasis on service provision, inter-connection & deployment, not on R&I

• 3 pillars: Transport, Energy & ICT (9 B proposed)

for ICT: (i) broadband networks, (ii) “Digital Service Infrastructures”

o eGovernment, eHealth, eCulture, Open Data…

o Multilingual Access to online Services

• aim is to "enable service providers to offer their content & services in as many languages as possible, in a most effective way"

core platform (hub) + general-purpose resources, both software & data + exemplary cross-border services

co-developed with government & industry

conclusions

• challenging times hence emphasis on competitiveness, growth & jobs

• research, innovation & infrastructure to reinforce each other

• heavy competition with other policy areas… hence

achieve critical mass & integrate research and non-research work; a single DG.CONNECT unit (G3 "Data Value Chain")

a shared responsibility: need to move from sponsorship to partnership

o researcho industryo government

conclusions

• the next 6 months will be crucial for the future of LT within H2020 and CEF

• to be successful:

well connected & mobilized community

well understood impact on economy & society

broad national recognition & support

info sources:

• EC inquiries, current programme

cnect-g3@ec.europa.eu

kimmo.rossi@ec.europa.eu, susan.fraser@ec.europa.eu

• EU programmes 2014-2020

http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/connecting-europe-facility

• LT-INNOVATE: http://www.lt-innovate.eu

• META-NET: http://www.meta-net.eu/