BELGIUM General policies
IWT, the Flemish Institute for the Promotion of Scientific-Technological Research in Industry, is a Flemish government institution which supports and stimulates research and technology transfer in the Flemish region.
The CIRB (Centre d’informatique pour la Région Bruxelloise – Brussels Regional Computer Services Centre), a public organism created in 1987, has as its aim the computerisation of the public sector in the Brussels Capital Region, including bringing the public sector on the Internet. The government has decided to select an operator suitable for creating a wide-band network in the Brussels Capital Region and to develop a three-year programme to prepare public sector bodies to make optimal use of this network. The Ministry of Telecommunications has allocated BEF 860 million to connect the entire Belgian school system to an RNIS network (64 Kbits minimum).
Brussels Technopole is a not-for-profit organisation created in 1991 as an initiative of the Brussels Regional Government. Its aim is to contribute to regional economic development by stimulating and accompanying innovation efforts within companies. One of its main domains of activity concerns information and communication technologies.
Government procurement
In 1998, the Flemish Administration launched a tender to outsource computer services to the private sector. This involves a major strategic shift, as in the past local and internal computer services in administrative departments worked with different systems, methods and management methods. In the future, the government stresses a single outside source for IT management to take advantage of economies of scale. This will strongly affect computer services in different government departments. Large software houses and IT consulting companies welcomed the move, but local (middle) management is somewhat opposed. The government has decided to continue with the plan.
Government demonstration and development projects
The SME-Net project was started three years ago by Brussels Technopole to familiarise some 15 Brussels-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the Internet: search for information, product presentation, document transfer. It offered participating firms free access to the Internet through its own infrastructure, set up a mandatory monthly workshop to ensure follow-up and exchange of experience, and organised focused training sessions to improve use of the system. This pilot project was limited in time, but its duration (1.5-2 years) gave the participating firms sufficient know-how to continue on their own. Owing to its success, two additionalk pilot groups, SME-Net 2 and 3, have been formed and cover different SMEs.
Furthermore, Brussels Technopole has recently launched a new pilot project on business-to-business electronic commerce, called Brussels e-commerce. Its objective is to test and demonstrate the use of the Internet for conducting business between firms: product and/or service catalogue, online negotiation and ordering, electronic payment. Brussels Technopole puts the necessary infrastructure (hardware and software) at the disposal of a group of some 20 Brussels firms. The project also provides participants with specialised consulting services in the field of e-commerce regulations and security of electronic payments. The Brussels Technopole Internet site for business-to-business e-commerce is www.brussels- ecommerce.com.
IRISweb Project (Interactive Regional Information and Self-awareness through Webculture). Approved at the end of 1996 by the Belgian Federal Office of Scientific, Technical and Cultural Affairs (OSTC) this project aims to demonstrate a full multimedia high-value-added service and the benefits to be obtained from it. IRISnet Project (Interactive Regional Information Services Network). Funded in 1995 by the OSTC, this project looks at workflow and electronic document exchange between administrations through a secure Intranet "PubliLink", using electronic signature via smart card and RSA algorithm, X-400 mail services and additional security features. CIRB acts as the certification authority.
MIRTO Project (Multimedia Interaction with Regional and Transnational Organisations). Funded in 1996 by the European Commission’s DGXIII, this project aims to define and test a new type of interaction between public administrations and citizens, SMEs, and professionals of European metropolitan areas at four experimental sites in Brussels, Madrid, Marseilles and Rome.
CITIES Project (Cities Telecommunications and Integrated Services). Funded in 1998 by the European Commission’s DG XIII, this project, introduced by the CIRB, will design, implement, test and evaluate a global, co-operative digital platform to support and distribute telematics services and to prepare large- scale deployment of a multilingual, multi-sectoral telematics offer by the public authorities.
Tele-administration. Launched by the Flemish authorities, it stimulates advanced IT applications in administration, in order to encourage efficiency, distribution of information (both internally and externally) and new services for the citizens. An internal competition has resulted in the selection of eight projects, funded at 100% for a budget of BEF 100 million (1998-99). Co-operation with the private sector was successfully encouraged.
MM Fund. This programme was launched by the Flemish government in 1997-98 in order to stimulate the private sector to produce multimedia services for the general public, using information from the government which is useful for the general public. It had a budget of BEF 50 million for the year 1998- 99.
PC/KD. Launched by the Flemish government, this programme aims to equip every school with PCs, Internet connection and related software (one PC for every ten students in 2001) with an estimated budget of BEF 2.6 billion (1998-2001). Good conditions were obtained through special agreements with equipment and software manufacturers. However, every school is free to choose its supplier. Complementary programmes from the telecommunication operators Belgacom (I-line project) andTelenet (Pandora) supply the schools with Internet connections at favourable costs BEF 20 000 a year).
Social identity card. The establishment of the social identity card (SIS) has three main objectives: to improve the identification of contributors to national insurance; to allow entitled persons who do not participate in the "Banque Carrefour de la Sécurité sociale" network (the Banque Carrefour is a public social security institution that is responsible for co-ordinating the treatment of information) to have electronic access to personal social security data; to simplify the administrative steps of contributors to national insurance. As of 1 November 1999, there were 10.2 million cards on the Belgian market.
Standards
The Belgian Institute for Standardisation (BIN-IBN), with a financial contribution from the Belgian Federal Office for Scientific, Technical and Cultural Affairs, is conducting a project to develop a multifunctional interactive data system concerning technical rules, standards and their application. It is foreseen that there will be a link with INES (Internet Network for European Standardization) to make available the working documents for elaborating European standards (EN) and the ENs themselves. It is expected to extend this service to larger number of users and increase the amount of data available, for example, the EU technical rules and their transposition in Belgian law, as well as attestations of product compliance.
R&D programmes
Regional Ministry of Walloon In 1996 and 1997, the Regional Ministry of Walloon called for applications for industrial and academic innovation projects as part of the "From Digital to Multimedia" programme. Some 40 projects were selected for implementation and were finalised starting from September 1998. The project’s total cost is around BEF 500 million provided in the form of subsidies to universities and as advance payments to firms.
IWT
Half of IWT’s budget of BEF 3 billion a year is devoted to R&D in ICT, including telecommunications, software and microelectronics. Different formulas exist. One encourages the introduction of R&D projects irrespective of their subject (a bottom-up approach). Selection is based on general R&D quality. The EUREKA project, Tessi and Media belong to this category. Another is more top-down, with the government fixing a number of strategic themes for industrial R&D projects. The main topics in this approach include multimedia and communication (ITA programme II, with a budget of roughly BEF 1 billion), non-technological aspects of IT (Medialab, BEF 134 million), language and speech processing (the Corpus project in co-operation with the Netherlands, BEF 200 million), microelectronics and embedded software (both part of the EUREKA programme).
Technology diffusion
As its mandate is to contribute to the development of the regional economy by stimulating innovation, technology diffusion has an important place in the Brussels Technopole programme of action and takes several forms:
• Provision of technological information: through publication of articles, following of professional press, organisation of information seminars, raising the awareness of private firms of the importance of IT, and review of sector-specific technologies. • Technology demonstration sessions on issues such as computer-assisted design (CAD), Internet searches. • Search for research partners through its Web site, its member organisations, publication of periodicals, presenting Brussels firms at international technology forums.
Brussels Technolpole hosts the Brussels Innovation Relay Centre (BIRC), funded by the EC, to reinforce its action. It is also an active member of several transnational networks for partner search and technology transfer.
MIDAS-NET is a network of 23 proactive advisory centres in 18 countries, established under the INFO2000 Programme. Its aims are to stimulate interest, demonstrate new products in the multimedia market and help information users to exploit the potential of multimedia content. It seeks to show businesses and citizens how they can benefit from multimedia information and to guide them towards the most relevant sources to satisfy their information needs. In Belgium it is a co-operative project among the Brussels, Walloon and Flemish regions and is co-ordinated by Brussels Technopole.
IWT is an active partner in the EC Innovation Programme. It plays an active role in stimulating participation in international R&D programmes, particularly in the European ICT Framework Programme and EUREKA.
Another organisation, Technological Innovation Flanders (TIV), encourages the establishment of commercial partnerships. In every province, a local organisation (GOM) fosters industrial activities, including technological diffusion.
IMEC (Advanced Microelectronics Research and Development Centre) and WTCM (Research Institute for Computer-integrated Manufacturing) have organised some specific diffusion activities on advanced microelectronics and use of IT in manufacturing machines, respectively. Together, they have formed a new IT centre for SMEs. There is new and very interesting growth in technology-related co-operation between different kinds of IT actors. A number of dynamic actors (companies, universities, research institutes and governmental bodies) have taken the lead in discussing and solving some specific problems together. At the moment, the following groups are most active: VSP (Flemish Software Platform on embedded software); DSP- Valley (on digital signal processing); FLV (Flanders Language Valley, on speech recognition); Medianet Flanders (on telepublishing); and MM-Valley (on multimedia production).
Concerning the global information society or infrastructure, Flanders (and Belgium more generally) is not intensively involved in general discussions at the moment. However, some companies and institutes play an important role in addressing problems such as high bandwidth optical communication, advanced microelectronics, information security and legal aspects. The same holds for IT-related standards: there is no major governmental or policy action, but there are some well-focused activities mainly from private sector or research institutes.
URLs
Ministry of the Flemish Community http://www.vlaanderen.be
CIRB (Centre d’Informatique pour la Région Bruxelloise – Brussels Regional Computer Services Centre) http://www.cirb.irisnet.be
Brussels Technopole www.technopol.be.
Institute for the Promotion of Scientific/Technological Research in Industry (IWT) http://www.iwt.be
Research institute for computer integrated manufacturing http://www.wtcm.be (Dutch)
Advanced microelectronics research and development centre (IMEC) http://www.imec.be
MIDAS sites http://www.midas.be http://www.brussels.midas.be http://www.vlaanderen.midas.be http://www.wallonie.midas.be