Representatives of All EU Countries Discussed e-infrastructure Development in Prague

Following the prestigious international professional conference The Future of the Internet: Europe Moving Forward that took place in Prague from 11 to 13 May, the CESNET association organised the E-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG) Workshop on 14 and 15 May. This workshop is organised regularly (twice per year) under the auspices of the EU presidency.

The main objective of the e-Infrastructure initiative is to support development of a political, technological and administrative framework for constructing e-infrastructures throughout Europe.

The e-Infrastructure initiative has been founded as a result of efforts of the European Commission with the main objective to interconnect research workers, irrespective of whether they work in their home institutions or in national or international scientific programmes. It is imperative for them to have access to shared unique or distributed scientific equipment, including data, computing technology, communication technology, and other types of equipment, no matter what the type of equipment is or where the equipment is located in the world.

The so-called Reflection Group of the e-Infrastructure initiative has been formed in order to specify and recommend optimal utilisation of the pan-European electronic infrastructure. The Reflection Group comprises official government representatives of all 27 EU countries. Recommendations and analyses of the group are critical when building the European knowledge society. Special attention is given to grid computing, data repositories, and networks. The Prague meeting dealt for example with issues of the data management, e-infrastructure federalisation or e-infrastructure legal aspects.

The CESNET association was founded by universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The association is currently financed mainly from the resources of the governmental Research and Development Board and funds of the association members. The association performs the research and development of information and communication technologies, building and developing the national gigabit optical network, CESNET2, designed for research and educational purposes. With its research activities and accomplishments, the CESNET association can represent the Czech Republic in the pan-European GÉANT2 network construction project, actively participating in the project implementation.