Management Technology
Associates (MTA) is a network of small firms and
individuals focused on the economic, social and policy impacts of
new technologies, led by Horace Mitchell.
In FP4 MTA's main engagement has been in leadership of the highly
successful European Telework
Development project (ETD), based in ACTS but working
with other programmes and DGs to promote new ways of working
across the market and in policy and programme development.
Approaching the Fifth Framework Programme (and especially the IST
Programme), MTA and European
Telework Online offer the following assets and
connections to organisations proposing projects across a number
of key themes:
Key Action I
Systems and Services for the Citizen:
MTA is working with the European
Association for Community Networking (EACN), which
anticipates providing support to the market-based aspects of this
theme and to reflect a
"citizen-oriented" perspective to the programme
as well as access to dissemination and test facilities through a network of existing local community
networking initiatives and activists.
Electronic Democracy: MTA
has supported the foundation and successful early work of UK Citizens Online Democracy (UK
COD), which anticipates joining with other e-dem initiatives to explore the opportunites and potential impacts
of e-dem, to undertake tests/experiments and to
provide user environments for trials of
new technologies relevant to e-dem.
Disabled and elderly: MTA
helped the formation of ISdAC
(the Information Society disAbilities Challenge) and has an
ongoing interest in innovation in this field, especially in
promoting initiatives and projects led
by and using the talents of people with disabilities
rather than perceiving them as simply customers or target
audiences.
Key Action II
New Methods of Work: MTA
has provide programme direction
to the successful ETD project and anticipates future engagement
in this theme. MTA owns and operates the European
Telework Online website, which will offer a wide
range of services to projects and initiatives; in particular, the
site offers a access to a network of
linked sites in 24 countries; a database of more
than 2,000 relevant resources, a community of more than ten thousand regular site users
and automated facilities
for using the services.
Electronic Commerce: MTA
has supported the formation and early development of the Network of Centres of Competence in
Electronic Commerce for Small Firms, which brings
together electronic commerce support organisations and networks
working at national and local levels in the EU and associated
countries and which expects to provide market
links for this theme. Additionally, for FP5, the MTA
online facilities will provide relevant e-business projects and
initiatives in FP5 with access to
informed and responsive user audiences for applications testing
and feedback.
Key Action III
MTA's main offer in the multimedia context is of low cost access to pre-qualified audiences
for testing proposed, defined and pilot technologies and
applications and for dissemination and
market response purposes.
Additionally, MTA will support specific proposals focusing on the
enhancement of online user communities
and interaction using multimedia and multilingual methods, and
including learning applications. Our focus is on market opportunities that are open to
European innovation and where European-derived
products and services have a natural advantage in
global markets.
Key Action IV
MTA will support specific proposals in the domains of intelligence and knowledge sharing and
information management, explicitly focused on the
application of these techniques in the context of either open or evolving communities of users
and with particular reference to the processes of users joining and leaving communities.
In this context "communities" includes enterprises, business teams, supply chains
and customer sets, as well as communities of interest and local
(geographic) communities.
Future and Emerging Technologies
In the Open Domain MTA seeks to contribute to innovation in opportunity assessment
for applications that are not immediately realisable with known
and affordable technologies. Our approach is based on "optimistic but sceptical"
thinking derived from engagement in market innovation through the
complete life cycle of commercial computing and data
communications.
Accompanying Measures
MTA has an interest in supporting accompanying measures relating
to the above themes, but especially in developing a more integrated approach to targeting of
defined external audiences and relating
technological innovation more closely to realisable market
opportunities.
Through work with the EITO Task Force in 1997-1999 (European IT
Observatory) MTA is qualified to contribute to specification, planning and implementation of
market measurement and analysis actions. MTA has a
particular interest in finding ways to measure
and report European take up and use of key Information Society
applications.
Through the European Telework Online network of websites (in 24
countries and 15 languages), MTA is well placed to support
projects and initiative engaging partners from Central and Eastern Europe and the
Mediterranean region.
Please complete this form, which is designed to enable interested parties to:
express an interest in areas of work proposed by MTA and European Telework Online
invite interest from MTA/European Telework Online in your own proposals and suggestions for FP5 work
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Framework Programme Five (FP5) Index Page
European Telework Online Home Page