28767 QUESTION-HOW, Annex 1 version 4, Drafting date: 29-05-01

INFORMATION SOCIETY TECHNOLOGIES

(IST)

PROGRAMME

EU's IST Logo

Contract for: Accompanying Measure

Annex 1: Description of Work

Project Acronym: QUESTION-HOW

Project Full Title: Quality Engineering Solutions via Tools, Information and Outreach for the New Highly-enriched Offerings from W3C: Evolving the Web in Europe

Proposal/Contract no: IST-2000-28767

Related to other Contract no:

Date of preparation of Annex 1: 22 May, 2001

Projected Operative Commencement date of contract:

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Contents page

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28767 QUESTION-HOW, Annex 1 version 4, Drafting date: 29-05-01

1. Project summary

Project Acronym: QUESTION-HOW Proposal No. IST-2000-28767
A2 Project Summary
Objectives (maximum 1000 characters)
QUESTION-HOW is aimed at providing the environment necessary for European companies to make mission critical decisions of quality with regard to the emerging Web specifications from W3C. The following major activities are necessary :
  • Aid the development of mission critical solutions via a range of tools
  • Improve outreach and communication channels through an enlarged set of European Offices
  • Informing Europe of emerging changes and technologies

The last providing generic support for the other two.

Description of the work (maximum 2000 characters)
The project will be divided into the following Workpackages :
WP1:
Companies need to be aware of the changes appearing on the Web and how they can ensure that their businesses evolve in line with the Web's evolution thereby future-proofing their Web investments. This workpackage will help companies develop mission critical solutions of quality in a complex and rapidly changing environment.
WP2:
Provide additional tools to support the new technologies.
WP3:
Extend outreach of the existing W3C Offices: the current set of Offices do not fully cover the European Community. Additional funding would increase the coverage.
WP4:
New European Offices: Some important geographic/language areas in Europe are not currently covered by the existing set of Offices. Four new Offices would provide additional coverage for today's European Union as well as for the candidate states to the Union from Central Europe and the Baltics, for example.
WP5:
Infrastructure for informed decisions: A more proactive role by the Offices with a more sustained and visible involvement. The necessary infrastructure will be generated by the workpackage.
WP6:
European events: A programme of events, technical workshops, and participation in existing Web conferences.
WP7:
Project management.
Milestones and expected results (maximum 500 characters)
The project duration is 24 months. We expect two major milestones after month 6 and month 15. By month 6, all the initial reviews will be complete and the plan established for the first set of major software deliverables. One new Office will be launched.

By month 15, one tour will have completed. Three of four new offices will have started. The update of existing tools will be completed.

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2. Project objectives

The World Wide Web and its infrastructure, the Internet, plays the key role in the development of the Information Society. The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to "lead the Web to its full potential" by evolving the Web as a "robust, scalable, adaptive infrastructure". W3C's main deliverables are its Recommendations (specifications) that evolve the Web protocols plus timely conversion tools, validation systems and checklists. Between 1995 and 1999 W3C, with the support of the European Commission, has built a strong European presence, initially via the Webcore Contract which set up the European team at INRIA. This was then extended by the W3C-LA (W3C Leveraging Action) project (Demonstration Action ESPRIT project 26229 - W3C-LA) that encouraged the take-up of Web technologies by:

This project will be executed in cooperation with existing national organisations, namely the W3C European Offices, which are all located at national government-funded vendor-neutral laboratories.They have good links to the relevant IT national dissemination and standards organisations. They were chosen on the basis of their national position, awareness and contacts.

Web awareness in Europe has grown dramatically since the launch of W3C-LA with some European countries embracing the Web as a major economic lever. However, others still lag behind. Also, while changes in the Web architecture were significant during the life of W3C-LA, even more dramatic changes will be taking place over the next two years. The major anticipated changes are:

While the changes so far have been mainly evolutionary, the arrival of vertical XML applications, the ability to enhance information with metadata, the ability to negotiate content with the device and a richer interaction model at the client leaves the industry with complex decisions as to how to evolve their company by providing quality solutions in this new and more complex environment. No longer is there an obvious solution to each sub-problem. As Web protocols are used in handling core business processes, the need for correct integrated future-proof solutions is a major challenge.

The primary goal of the project is to contribute to the economic development of the Community by making European industry aware of the complexities of Web technologies today, to help them in making the right decisions in choosing their way forward,and to enable them to increase their participation in W3C efforts. To achieve this European industry need to be provided with the tools to move from any existing legacy systems and to understand the architecture of the standards that are currently under development at W3C and how they will need to react and how they can contribute to the W3C efforts.

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W3C sees three major objectives necessary to achieve these goals with regard to the evolving Web. These are:

By the end of the project, W3C and its offices will have developed a complete set of tools needed by European industry to compete effectively and make quality decisions with regard to their positioning in the new economy. An active dissemination programme will have been followed through two tours organised by the offices in at least five cities throughout Europe, regional office events, and W3C's active participation at a major international World Wide Web conference (WWW12, in Budapest, Hungary, in May 2003; traditionally, conferences in this series are the major yearly events where W3C presents its latest results to the general public). Local support will be available throughout Europe through a network of local offices (covering around 85% of Europe, including some of the newly Associated States, in contrast to the current 50% coverage) whose technical expertise will have been enhanced in the course of the project.

The first three months of the project will establish the baseline against which the success of the project will be measured. This will include, with the help of the European offices, an overview of the current needs of European industry, as well as an assessment of the likely development of future W3C Recommendations. This overview will provide the focus of the activities of the project.

3. Participant list

List of Participants
Participant:
Role
Participant:
No
Participant name Participant
short name
Country Date enter project Date exit project
C 1 Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique INRIA Fr Start of project End of project

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4. Contribution to programme/key action objectives

The Web and its proper development is needed for most of the priorities of WP2000:

Recent developments in W3C technologies are crucial to these priorities:

The key action IV objective that is being tackled is:

"To promote excellence in the technologies which are crucial to the Information Society, to accelerate their take-up and broaden their field of application. The work will address the convergence of information processing, communications and networking technologies and infrastructures. The focus will be on technologies and infrastructures common to several applications. The architecture should be based on ubiquitous computing and communications and open technology frameworks for personalised services."

The most crucial technology to the Information Society is the Web. It is also the most ubiquitous. It is the only technology that offers a common framework for corporations, government and the individual to interact using a common infrastructure. The speed of its take-up by organisations (and governments) is crucial to their survival. It opens up their market place and provides major challenges both internally, in terms of work practices, and externally in terms of production, marketing and selling across the whole industrial perspective. Further, the quality of life of individuals with accessibility problems can be significantly improved if the evolution of the Web is aware of their needs and caters for these needs.

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Within action IV, IV.3 states that:

"This work is centred around the development, deployment, operating and evolution of software-intensive systems embedded in goods and services as well as facilitating production and enterprise processes. Take-up actions, in particular best practice initiatives form an important part of the work"

The liberation of the Web from the Personal Computer as the user interface will be a major driving force in the next decade. The integration of mobile devices and the Web will present major challenges and opportunities for industry. This will be followed by a similar integration between the Web and TV. The common infrastructure bringing this convergence will be dominated by the Web. The evolution of W3C's protocols and their understanding by European industry will be crucial to European long-term competitiveness.

A major thrust of W3C is the move from HTML to XHTML and the modularisation of XHTML to allow content negotiation between client and server. XHTML is extensible and the intention is that it would provide services that match devices (PDAs, televisions, mobile phones, car head-up displays, etc). Each device has specific characteristics and often each has both positive and negative features. For example, the mobile phone may have a small display area but it is a personal device that is aware of both the user and the user's location and can therefore be more easily customised. Televisions in conjunction with the PC provide a much richer environment for displaying certain types of information.

Multimedia services available to a range of devices will need to have provision for negotiation based on the quality and requirements of the service. The work in W3C's SYMM Activity (SYnchronised Multi Media) is aiming at delivering presentations appropriate to the device, its location and the user. Thus, facilities are being provided for multi-language captioning, graceful degradation when network bandwidth decreases, load sharing based on location etc. There is also the aim to move much more of the intelligence to the device to avoid interaction delays due to network bottlenecks.

With mobile phone users exceeding PC users by a significant factor, the integration of mobile phone and PC usage of the Web is of significant importance. W3C Members are major players in this area. NTT's DoCoMo service in Japan has over 10 Million users only 16 months after its introduction. Ericsson, Nokia and Philips are European W3C Members involved in this area and there is a need to evolve the offerings of DoCoMo, based on HTML, and the WAP Forum, based on a specific application of XML (and soon XHTML), to an environment where appropriate content can be transmitted to a device based on the device's capabilities and the user's preferences. W3C has recently started an activity, called "Device Independence", specifically targeted at these problems and the first results can be expected during the lifetime of the QUESTION-HOW project.

The major architectural framework for storing and manipulating information is a set of compatible XML-based applications enriched with metadata defined in RDF. The major aim of this project is to ensure that Europe is aware of this and knows how to move there efficiently without being side-tracked down expensive cul-de-sacs. The change from current environments (using the Web as a front-end to existing systems) to a new environment where XML is the main architectural building block is both complex and, in many cases, revolutionary rather than evolutionary. Companies will need to rethink their main information architecture.

W3C already provides a large palette of software support tools, validators, proof-of-concept implementations, which are all in the public domain. These tools, enhanced by this project, will provide the necessary base infrastructure to support the development of services on the Web. The sources of all software, developed by W3C or its offices, are and will available to the public. Furthermore, all W3C Recommendations are freely available to all.

QUESTION-HOW will either provide the new tools to allow that change to be made or act as the a source of information for open source tools developed by the W3C Members and the community at large. A more aware Europe with a strong understanding of the different approaches that can be taken will be better fitted to accept the major challenges facing it in the near future.

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5. Relations to Programme

The whole thrust of the IST Programme is the creation of a user friendly information society. This accompanying measure is concerned with ensuring that Europe is aware of the future trends on the Web and uses the new technologies appropriately and effectively. As the Web will be used by all levels of society and is the most accessible of information sources, it clearly has great benefit to the IST Programme as a whole. Publicity material for events in Europe will be made available to all IST projects.

The context in which the programme is defined is one where convergence of IT technologies is assumed with the appearance of generic devices (such as the mobile phone with TV, audio and Web searching ability) and the rapid deployment of e-commerce based on these trends. Again, the Web and its use in a modern and efficient way is a prerequisite. There is currently no other candidate technology that will do the job and no other organisation besides W3C to move it forward.

This accompanying measure:

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6. Community added value and contribution to EU policies

The economic objectives of the European Community are to:

The added value of the Commission is to:

Through education and development of tools relevant to the new Web technologies, and by complementing the work of the W3C at the technical level, this project aims at enhancing the growth of the Web in Europe.

Competitiveness is mainly established through awareness and vision. This project will ensure that developments made in Europe are all relevant. Europe will be aware of the future directions on the Web, be able to establish a strategy to cut to those developments and have the competence to envisage potential future scenarios. The vision must still lie with European industry. You can lead the horse to water but it has to drink alone!

This whole project is concerned with encouraging technical progress in the right direction. Too much energy is spent by companies doing short term developments that are financially viable in the short term but are not necessary profitable in the long term. This is true for much of the European Web industry. As this industry is likely to be larger than other European industries (aerospace, telecommunications, automobiles), Europe must get it right long term.

As its name implies, the World Wide Web is all about global economies. There is no more international a technology than the Web. Getting Europe's future use of the Web right is probably the most important international objective for Europe.

The previous W3C activities supported by the Commission have improved considerably the knowledge and take-up of Web technologies in Europe, particularly in the UK and Germany. However, awareness and take-up in Europe varies greatly. The technology is endemic in Scandinavia but less present in Iberia. One of the key aims of the project is to, given an input from the existing Offices, attempt to even up this take-up throughout Europe, for example in the Iberian peninsula.

Many new innovations on the Web require legislature or encouragement within Europe for them to achieve maximum penetration. Good examples are digital signatures. A second is vertical-market XML applications. This project will raise awareness throughout Europe as to how Web technologies are progressing.

As this project is being hosted at W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), it fosters the convergence and interoperability of Web communication languages and protocols at the global level, which is a key objective of the European Commission.

The Community added-value is also clear. The Web is no longer an information browsing facility but more the fundamental working methodology and technology for industry.

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7. Contribution to Community social objectives

The main EC social objectives are:

In the last few years there has been an explosion of interest in the use of the Web by individuals, companies, governments and nations. In the last two years, Web usage has moved away from PC-based delivery to one where a variety of devices (mobile phones, TV, PDAs, household appliances, etc) will be used to access information and carry out transactions.

Technological advances will make possible:

The Web industry will become the major industry in Europe over the next few years. In 1998, revenue in the Web industry in the USA was $505 Billion and employed 2.3 million people. This compares with $355 Billion in the US airline industry and $300 Billion in US Telecommunications. The prediction is that the Web industry will be greater than the two combined by 2001. This will also occur in Europe but with a lag of one or two years. A major growth industry in terms of jobs supported is the Web industry. A modern thriving Web industry will help employment in Europe.

A major push of the World Wide Web Consortium is to ensure that the Web is accessible by all. By moving information sources, commerce and education to the Web, the quality of life of people with accessibility problems, social, economic and physical, will have their quality of life improved.

The Web allows business, education, and recreation to be carried out at a location convenient to the individual. Teleworking, decentralisation, mobile access all help preserve the environment.

8. Economic development and S&T prospects

As an accompanying measure the role of the project is to publicise and transfer technologies which have and are being developed within W3C. The benefit of the transfer is that European industry and technology developers will be aware of the cutting edge recommendations and proposals within W3C and be able to guide their developments to conform to these. The project will provide guidance on the interpretation and application of complex recommendations which will provide a further advantage to industry in applying W3C technologies to their own local developments.

The benefits to European industry is that technologies developed to conform to W3C recommendations will be more likely to be adopted and assimilated than those which do not, and more likely to interact with other technologies than those which do not. The long term benefit to industry will be increased competitiveness, early market entry, early adoption, greater market share, and ultimately greater profit and wealth creation within Europe.

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9. Workplan

9.1 General description

The whole thrust of the QUESTION-HOW project is in providing the environment necessary for European companies to make mission critical decisions of quality with regard to the emerging Web specifications from W3C. The following major activities are necessary to enhance the current support of European industry with regard to the evolving Web:

Hence we divide the Project into the following Workpackages:

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9.2 Workpackage list

Workpackage list
Workpackage
No
Workpackage title Lead
contractor No
INRIA Person-
months
Subcontractor Person-
months
Start
month
End
month
Phase Deliverable
No
WP1 Develop Mission Critical Solutions INRIA 18 18 1 15 1 D1.1 to D1.6
WP2 Provide New Tools INRIA 26 22 7 24 1 D2.1 to D2.6
WP3 Extend Outreach INRIA 2 4 1 18 1 D3.1 to D3.4
WP4 New European Offices INRIA 4 8 4 18 1 D4.1 to D4.4
WP5 Infrastructure for Informed Decisions INRIA 6 6 4 24 1 D5.1 to D5.4
WP6 European Events INRIA 2 4 4 20 1 D6.1 to D6.2
WP7 Project Management INRIA 12 0 1 24 1 D7.1 toD7.4

The Project Management for the Project will be located at INRIA/W3C. Much of the work will be located at the W3C Offices (Germany:GMD, Greece:FORTH, Israel:University of Jerusalem, Italy:CNR, Netherlands:CWI, Sweden:SICS, UK:RAL/CCLRC); each already have a Contract with INRIA/W3C to perform dissemination activities within their region. Each are nationally funded, vendor-neutral organisations with good local contacts. The manpower costs defined in the project are the INRIA rates agreed with the Commission. The W3C Offices will carry out the work at the appropriate national rate by a set of subcontracts set up by INRIA. It is also feasible that some of the work will be located at some of the new Offices. In consequence, and also due to the nature of the project, it is not possible at this time to define the time to define the exact location of each activity; much will also depend on the result of the initial assessment tasks which are part of Workpackages 1 and 2. The current technical annex refers to three subcontractors only, namely CWI, RAL, and GMD. However, this is for illustrative purposes only. It must be emphasized that all current and future European offices will become subcontractors of the project along the lines described before.

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Workpackage description: WP1: Help Companies Develop Mission Critical Solutions
Workpackage number: 1
Start date or starting event: Month 1
End date: Month 15
Total Person-months: 36.
Per participant Person-months: INRIA (18), Subcontractors (18)
Objectives
To improve the quality of existing W3C Recommendations by improving the tools (validators, presentation facilities, conversion tools, benchmarks, demonstrators and guidelines) associated with them. The set of tools to be developed will be derived from the needs of the W3C working groups where W3C members exercise their W3C member rights.
Description of work
  1. Assess the state of the current set of tools and their relevance to European industry
  2. Agree a work programme to enhance the existing tools
  3. Allocate the work to sites (INRIA or the Offices) with appropriate skills
  4. Monitor and synchronise the activities of the selected sites
Deliverables
  1. D1.1: Evaluation report for tool needs and assignment to subcontractors.
  2. D1.2: Validator
  3. D1.3: Conversion tools
  4. D1.4: Privacy tools
  5. D1.5: Benchmark
  6. D1.6: Demonstrator
Milestones and expected result
  1. M1.1: Evaluation Report (M3)
  2. M1.2: Validator Tool (M6)
  3. M1.3: Conversion Tool (M12)
  4. M1.4: Privacy Tools (M9)
  5. M1.5: Benchmark Tool (M12)
  6. M1.6: Demonstrator Tool (M15)

Expected Result: enhanced value in W3C Recommendations through the provision of tool support shifting the user from awareness to understanding of the emergent technology.

Participant's contribution

As stated previously, it is not possible at this time to define the exact location of each activity; much will also depend on the result of the initial assessment tasks which are part of this Workpackage, and which will define the exact set of tasks. It is only based on those tasks that the current or future subcontractors will finalize their exact involvement in the project. The tasks distribution below is solely for illustrative purposes. Also, as a result of the final setup, subcontractors might take over the load of workpackage leadership.

  • INRIA: Involved in Evaluation of tool needed, assignement to offices and building Quality tools.
    Planned effort: 18 person month
  • CWI: involved in building Validator Tool, Benchmark Tools and Demonstrator Tool.
    Planned effort: 6 person month
  • GMD: involved in building Demonstrator Tool.
    Planned effort: 6 person month
  • RAL: involved in building Privacy Tools, Conversion Tool and Benchmark Tool.
    Planned effort: 6 person month

Work-Package Leader: INRIA/W3C

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Workpackage description: WP2: Provide Tools to Support New Technologies
Workpackage number: 2
Start date or starting event: Month 7
End date: Month 24
Total Person-months: 48.
Per participant Person-months: INRIA (26) Subcontractors (22)
Objectives
To develop a set of new tools (validators, presentation facilities, conversion tools, benchmarks, demonstrators and guidelines) related to XHTML, Metadata, Multimedia, use in Device Independent environments, and XSL that are relevant to European Industry. The set of tools to be developed will be derived from the needs of the W3C working groups where W3C members exercise their W3C member rights.
Description of work
  1. Analyse possible new activities
  2. Select tools to be developed
  3. Develop 5 New Tools
Deliverables
  1. D2.1: Evaluation report for activities to be targeted and assignement to subcontractors
  2. D2.2: XHTML Activity
  3. D2.3: Metadata Activity
  4. D2.4: Multimedia Activity
  5. D2.5: Device Independence Activity
  6. D2.6: XSL Activity
Milestones and expected result
  1. M2.1: Analyse possible new activities (M9)
  2. M2.2: Select tools to be developed(M9)
  3. M2.3: First New Tool (M12)

Expected Result: enhanced value in W3C Recommendations through the provision of tool support, shifting the user from awareness to practical use of the emergent technology.

Participant's contribution

As stated previously, it is not possible at this time to define the exact location of each activity; much will also depend on the result of the initial assessment tasks which are part of this Workpackage, and which will define the exact set of tasks. It is only based on those tasks that the current or future subcontractors will finalize their exact involvement in the project. The tasks distribution below is solely for illustrative purposes. Also, as a result of the final setup, subcontractors might take over the load of workpackage leadership.

  • INRIA: Evaluation of activity targeted, work allocation, involved in new activity development
    Planned effort: 26 person month
  • CWI: involved in XHTML Activity and Multimedia Activity
    Planned effort: 8 person month
  • GMD: involved in Device Independence Activity and Metadata Activity
    Planned effort: 7 person month
  • RAL: involved in XSL Activity and Multimedia Activity
    Planned effort: 7 person month

Work Package Leader: INRIA/W3C

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Workpackage description: WP3: Extend Outreach of Existing Offices
Workpackage number: 3
Start date or starting event: Month 1
End date: Month 18
Total Person-months: 6
Per participant Person-month: INRIA (2), Subcontractors (4)
Objectives
The W3C Head of Offices and the current W3C Office Managers to assess the coverage of Europe by the existing set of European W3C Offices, broaden the scope of some Offices, and define the location of new Offices to provide better coverage within Europe.
Description of work
  1. Analyse Current Office Coverage
  2. Decide the additional coverage for at least three existing Offices
  3. Select sites for four new Offices
  4. Launch the enhanced Office sites within their extended community
Deliverables
  1. D3.1: Analyse Current Office Coverage by the Existing European W3C Offices
  2. D3.2: Widen Scope of Office A
  3. D3.3: Widen Scope of Office B
  4. D3.4: Widen Scope of Office C
Milestones and expected result
  1. M3.1: Analysis of Coverage report (M3)
  2. M3.2: First extended Office coverage in place (M9)

Expected result: Enhanced local W3C Office coverage within Europe through the use of existing Offices with a view, with Workpackage 4, to around 85% coverage of European Union (including the prospective new members in coming years).

Participant's contribution

As stated previously, it is not possible at this time to define the exact location of each activity; much will also depend on the result of the initial assessment tasks which is part of this Work Package, and which will define the exact set of tasks. It is only based on those tasks that the current or future subcontractors will finalize their exact involvement in the project. The tasks distribution below is solely for illustrative purposes. Also, as a result of the final setup, other subcontractors or W3C/INRIA might take over the load of workpackage leadership.

  • INRIA: participate in current office Coverage by the Exiting European W3C Offices
    Planned effort: 2 person month
  • CWI: provide staff for head of offices leading this task and coordinate Work Package
    Planned effort: 2 person month
  • GMD: participate and consult in planning and execution of extending outreach of existing offices and planning new offices. If selected as office to be extended, implement office extension.
    Planned effort: 1 person month
  • RAL: participate and consult in planning and execution of extending outreach of existing offices and planning new offices. If selected as office to be extended, implement office extension.
    Planned effort: 1 person month

Work Package Leader: CWI

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Workpackage description: WP4: New European Offices
Workpackage number: 4
Start date or starting event: Month 4
End date: Month 18
Total Person-months: 12
Per participant Person-month: INRIA (4), Subcontractors (8)
Objectives
Set up to four new W3C European Offices at selected sites in order to provide maximum coverage within Europe. Two Offices will be in the Newly Associated States.
Description of work
  1. Set up activities to launch four new Offices (based on the result of WP3)
Deliverables
  1. D4.1: Launch New Office D
  2. D4.2: Launch New Office E
  3. D4.3: Launch New Office F
  4. D4.4: Launch New Office G
Milestones and expected result
  1. M4.1: Office D Set Up (M6)
  2. M4.2: Office E Set Up (M12)
  3. M4.3: Office F Set Up (M10)
  4. M4.4: Office G Set Up (M18)

Expected result: Enhanced local W3C Office coverage within Europe through the use of new Offices with a view, with Workpackage 3, to around 85% coverage

Participant's contribution

As stated previously, it is not possible at this time to define the exact location of each activity; much will also depend on the result of the initial assessment tasks which is part of this Work Package, and which will define the exact set of tasks. It is only based on those tasks that the current or future subcontractors will finalize their exact involvement in the project. The tasks distribution below is solely for illustrative purposes. Also, as a result of the final setup, other subcontractors or W3C/INRIA might take over the load of workpackage leadership.

  • INRIA: Set up activities to launch four new Offices (based on the result of WP3)
    Planned effort: 4 person month
  • CWI: provide staff for W3C head of offices leading this task and coordinate Work Package
    Planned effort: 4 person month
  • GMD: participate and consult in planning and execution of creating new offices.
    Planned effort: 2 person month
  • RAL: participate and consult in planning and execution of creating new offices. '
    Planned effort: 2 person month

Work Package Leader: CWI

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Workpackage description: WP5: Infrastructure for Informed Decisions
Workpackage number: 5
Start date or starting event: Month 4
End date: Month 24
Total Person-months: 12
Per participant Person-month: INRIA (6), Subcontractors (6)
Objectives
To develop the presentation material, handouts, stand decoration and demonstrations needed to disseminate the current and future infrastructure of the Web across Europe.
Description of work
  1. Establish what dissemination aids are needed for the tools developed in WP1 and WP2
  2. Establish what is needed to promote the new W3C Recommendations using experience from W3C-LA
  3. Allocate the PR material to one or more of the categories (presentations, handouts, stand decoration, demonstrations)
Deliverables
  1. D5.1: Presentations
  2. D5.2: Handouts
  3. D5.3: Stand Decoration
  4. D5.4: Demonstrations
Milestones and expected result
  1. M5.1: First Presentation (M4)
  2. M5.2: First batch of handouts (M4)
  3. M5.3: First release of Revised W3C Stand Decoration (M3)
  4. M5.4: First new Demonstration (M9)

Expected Result: High-value dissemination aids used throughout QUESTION-HOW at events organised by the W3C Offices (WP6), at the opening events of the new Offices from WP4 and at relevant events organised by others outside W3C.

Participant's contribution

As stated previously, it is not possible at this time to define the exact location of each activity; much will also depend on the result of the initial assessment tasks which is part of this Work Package, and which will define the exact set of tasks. It is only based on those tasks that the current or future subcontractors will finalize their exact involvement in the project. The tasks distribution below is solely for illustrative purposes. Also, as a result of the final setup, subcontractors might take over the load of workpackage leadership.

  • INRIA: Establish what dissemination aids is needed to promote the new W3C Recommendations using experience from W3C-LA
    Planned effort: 6 person month
  • CWI: prepare Presentations, Handouts, Stand Decoration and Demonstrations for WP1 and WP2 tools developed by CWI
    Planned effort: 2 person month
  • GMD: prepare Presentations, Handouts, Stand Decoration and Demonstrations for WP1 and WP2 tools developed by GMD
    Planned effort: 2 person month
  • RAL: prepare Presentations, Handouts, Stand Decoration and Demonstrations for WP1 and WP2 tools developed by RAL
    Planned effort: 2 person month

Work Package Leader: INRIA/W3C

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Workpackage description: WP6: European Events
Workpackage number: 6
Start date or starting event: Month 5
End date: Month 20
Total Person-months: 6
Per participant Person-months: INRIA (2), Subcontractors (4)
Objectives
To run two major rounds of events in Europe focusing on interoperability and metadata. Each round will consist of similar events in several locations across Europe. Each tour will end with an event in Brussels, to extend outreach into the Commission itself.The Brussels event will be organized by INRIA.
Description of work
  1. Set up Interop Tour
  2. Set up Semantic Tour
Deliverables
  1. D6.1: Interop Tour, with final event in Brussels
  2. D6.2: Semantic Tour, with final event in Brussels
Milestones and expected result
  1. M6.1: Interop Tour Complete (M10)
  2. M6.2: Semantic Tour Start (M13)

Participant's contribution

As stated previously, it is not possible at this time to define the exact location of each activity; much will also depend on the result of the initial assessment tasks which is part of this Work Package, and which will define the exact set of tasks. It is only based on those tasks that the current or future subcontractors will finalize their exact involvement in the project. The tasks distribution below is solely for illustrative purposes. Also, as a result of the final setup, other subcontractors or W3C/INRIA might take over the load of workpackage leadership.

  • INRIA: Involved in setting up both tours
    Planned effort: 2 person month
  • CWI: staff W3C head of offices with responsibility to plan and execute Event rounds. Plan and manage potential events in the Netherlands.
    Planned effort: 2 person month
  • GMD: plan and manage potential events in Germany
    Planned effort: 1 person month
  • RAL: plan and manage potential events in the UK
    Planned effort: 1 person month

Work Package Leader: CWI

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Workpackage description: WP7: Project Management
Workpackage number: 7
Start date or starting event: Month 1
End date: Month 24
Total Person-months: 12
Per participant Person-months: INRIA (12)
Objectives
To ensure that the outputs from the project are of high quality, delivered to time, are relevant and provide maximum impact.
Description of work
To ensure that the Project runs to time and budget
Deliverables
  1. D7.1: Initial Progress Report, Month 6
  2. D7.2: Second Progress Report, Month 12
  3. D7.3: Third Progress Report, Month 18
  4. D7.4: Final Progress Report, Month 24
Milestones and expected result
  1. M7.1: Initial Report (M6)
  2. M7.2: Second Report (M15)
Subcontractor's contribution

None - this Work Package will be fully exectuted by INRIA/W3C

Work Package Leader: INRIA/W3C

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9.3 Workpackage descriptions

WP1: Help Companies Develop Mission Critical Solutions

Evolution of the Web is proceeding at a very fast rate. Maintaining cohesion between 30 or 40 Working Drafts under development within W3C is a demanding task. It is only possible through the assignment of W3C's Technical Staff to all Working Groups and the weekly meetings of the Staff to ensure that interoperability is maintained. For these reasons, technical work on the development of Recommendations and the reference codes provided by W3C is maintained within the W3C Hosts.

W3C recognises the need to improve the quality of Recommendations as the number and complexity increases and the need to interwork becomes more important. This is being addressed in a number of ways both within and outside W3C:

This is not an exhaustive list but gives a flavour of the major approaches available to improve the quality of the W3C Recommendations in terms of understanding and adoption and encourage the correct usage of this rich architecture.

W3C is seeking funding from the Commission to resource additional expertise within the W3C European sites (Host and Offices, that are already established R&D institutions) to help provide the tools that are crucial to European industry in moving to the new technologies. This requires both raising awareness of existing tools and modification of those tools as the need arises. Developments at the level of 3 person years over 15 months would allow a number of tool enhancements to be made available to the European industry, would also broaden the technical ability of the W3C Offices further and give a pool of expertise to be used in dissemination activities throughout Europe.

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The aim of this Workpackage is to achieve a program of work with the following characteristics:

This is not an exhaustive list but gives a flavour of the tool support that is needed. It is feasible that activities in some areas will not be required while others will need more effort. The actual breakdown will be decided as late as possible to make the deliverables as relevant as possible. The industry as a whole and W3C Members in particular provide a set of open source tools that need to be integrated with any developments progressed in this Project. The Offices need to convey information about all the open source tools that come available.

From the point of view of the W3C Offices, getting more involved in W3C developments has the added benefit that it will make their technical staff more competent in the area to answer questions and to present W3C within Europe. In W3C-LA, this was partly achieved by having demonstrators developed at both the W3C INRIA Host and also at RAL, the UK Office. In consequence, RAL staff became competent at a number of the new Technologies and were able to mount demonstrations at events as well as the INRIA Host staff and deliver technical workshops without recourse to W3C Staff.

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WP2: Provide Additional Tools to Support New Technologies

There is an urgent need to make Europe aware of a number of new W3C developments that will cause them to make major changes in their information infrastructures. Some of these are given below and will be used as exemplars of what might be achieved. The exact nature of these deliverables will not be known until an assessment is carried out at the start of the Project. They should be seen as indicative of the spread of applications that may well be pursued:

Funding is requested for a set of specific tools and demonstrators aimed at these inter-related technologies. As for WP1 the package will start with an evaluation period followed by the definitive list of new tools to be supplied. The project will concentrate initially on the existing tools and then focus on the production of new tools.

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WP3: Extend Outreach of Existing Offices

The current set of Offices cover about 50% of the European Union. To make a complete coverage of the existing European Union in terms of first line support, there will be the need to open new Offices and/or widen the area covered by existing Offices. W3C would like to see 100% coverage of Europe and will move towards this long-term goal as follows:

  1. Analyse the current coverage and ascertain which countries can be best covered by a neighbour
  2. Analyse the areas where the need for awareness is the greatest, bearing in mind the needs of W3C in terms of internationalisation activities and particular market sectors
  3. Seek the views of the Commission in terms of their own concerns with European awareness
  4. Look at potential W3C Office sites in Europe

At the end of this exercise, to be covered in the first 3 months of the Project, the aim will be to define a plan whereby complete coverage is obtained by:

Existing Offices will need additional funding, particularly early on, in establishing their ability to support another country locally. It is estimated that 40KEuro for each of three Offices will be sufficient for the initial 18-month period. Possibilities to be considered are:

The current offices form a coherent entity already. Due to the regular meetings, both on the phone and personal, the offices have already set up internal cooperation activities, including:

This pattern of cooperation, which is to be developed further during the project, is and will be very helpful in a successful improvement of general outreach.

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WP4: New European Offices

Having completed the analysis described in WP3 earlier, W3C anticipates the need for two more offices in Europe to bring about an increased coverage of the European Union by W3C Offices. The anticipated new-Office start up costs would be around 80KEuro per Office, including manpower.

The major concern within W3C with regard to European coverage is the lack of an Office in the Iberian peninsula and the combination of low awareness in that part of Europe with a very low Internet usage. As the two countries of the peninsula have cultural links to major language blocs in South America, W3C would benefit from at least one Office in that region. The lack of members in these countries makes the task more difficult.

Given that one of the two Offices is established in Spain or Portugal, the other most likely site would be Finland (with an influence on the Baltic region) and, possibly, Belgium or Switzerland. However, at this stage the exact siting is not defined and awaits the initial analysis in WP3.

A separate issue is the position of the Central European countries and the Baltic States such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia and Latvia. Although the penetration of the Internet and Web technologies in those countries is low, it is, in some cases, significantly higher than in some other European countries. W3C has Members in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. W3C would like to see at least two Offices established to support these regions both to raise awareness in order to avoid the build-up of usage of obsolete technologies and ensure a leap-frog to the new technologies without the need to manage the transition from obsolescent Web technologies.

Note that the 12th World Wide Web conference will take place in Budapest, Hungary, in May 2003; it can be expected that this conference (which has traditionally strong ties with the World Wide Web Consortium) will have a boosting effect on the region as a whole.

It is unclear at this stage whether these Offices will be installed before or after the other two new Offices.

As described in the description of WP3, the current offices have already created a coherent, cooperating entity, and this will be reinforced during the project. As a consequence, current offices have already a more "general" view of the activities throughout Europe and are not "burried" in their own region. They might also have direct knowledge on possible national, cultural, regional, etc, sensitivities which are present in their respective countries and environment. These information become essential when deciding where new offices would be set up, and it is therefore primordial that they would take part in the decision process.

Once a new office has been set up, the new office managers will not only become part of the "team" of offices (and thereby benefit from the cooperation described above), but will also receive practical startup help from the existing offices. These will include:

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WP5: Infrastructure for Informed Decisions

To define mission critical solutions of quality in a complex and rapidly changing environment requires an infrastructure to get the message across that the decisions to be made are not simple, that there are tools that can help, that those decisions are needed now and quick fixes will not work, that a long-term strategic look is important. These messages need to be tailored to local, regional European needs (possibly in local languages). This includes:

W3C-LA produced about 50 double-sided flyers, a number of primers (for example the CSS primer), packaged demonstrators, stand material, slide sets for specific Recommendations and a set of individuals capable of demonstrating and presenting the emerging technologies. Most of these require a major update due to the rapid evolution of the Web over the last year. In addition, there is the need for material to help companies plan their approach to change. In consequence, a process similar to W3C-LA needs to be defined for the next phase of the Web's evolution building on the experience of W3C-LA.

Deliverables fall approximately into the following categories:

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WP6: European Events

To make best use of material and achieve wide dissemination, conferences and technical workshops, organised locally by the W3C Offices, provide a key opportunity. During W3C-LA, these conferences/workshops were held regularly across Europe, initially with speakers from the W3C Hosts supported by the newly created Offices and later on in W3C-LA, with speakers from the Offices themselves. Towards the end of W3C-LA this was enhanced so that technical experts from W3C Member organisations presented their latest progress with respect to the overall architecture. These dissemination events achieved the following:

The round of events given as part of W3C-LA were well attended and significantly improved the understanding of the changing Web throughout Europe. A set of Events starting in the Autumn of 2001 (assuming a June 2000 start date) and a second set about a year later are proposed. They would be aimed at both improving coverage in Europe and disseminating best practice with regard to emerging new technologies. The plan will be to run similar events at about 5 locations across Europe over a short timescale (under two weeks). The focus of the two series will be:

  1. Interop Tour, XHTML, Mobile Computing and Interworking of XML Applications: by Autumn of 2001, significant changes will be coming via
    1. the modularisation of XHTML,
    2. the ability to negotiate between the server and user device concerning the capabilities of the device and
    3. the ability to embed a number of specialist XML applications within a Web document (SVG being a good example).
  2. Semantic Tour: by 2002, the move from Document Type Declarations (DTDs) to XML Schemas with stronger datatyping will enable strong validation of the interchange of content. The use of external linkage via XLink will enable the reuse of information in a variety of ways and add to the information content of documents and their relationships. Coupled with developments around RDF, XML-Signature and Canonical XML, next year should see the first round of intelligent applications on the Web. Companies will be able to take Web technologies to the heart of their business practices.

The aim would be to run these as 1-day events supported by the W3C Offices and targeted at about 150 to 250 people at a time. Each event would consist of a set of talks defining the various Recommendations followed by examples of usage. Speakers would come from the W3C Hosts, Offices, and W3C Members. Associated with each event would be a set of demonstrations related to the topics of the Event together with relevant dissemination material. Although at present it is not yet decided which cities will be visited by these tours, the plans are that in both cases the closing event would be organized in Brussels by INRIA.

W3C would donate the time of the W3C staff involved. Funding would be required for the rental of facilities, secretarial support and printing associated with the event. On average, the estimated cost of each event is 20 KEuro.

These major events establish and validate a set of material and talks, which can then be further customised by the Offices for more local events aimed at specific local audiences. In W3C-LA most of the Offices provided industry specific activities and highly focused workshops aimed at a small number of participants with hands-on use of the technology.

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WP7: Project Management

Even though this is a single participant submission, coordination is needed to manage the participation of W3C Offices in the project. The co-ordinating partner, INRIA, will provide the project and technical management. The Project Management will ensure the effective completion of the programme of work. It will provide the direction for the project and the interface to the Commission, both for contractual issues and ones related to the work programme.

The management structure of the project will be lightweight. The structure will consist of:

It will be the responsibility of the Project Manager to:

W3C and the Offices are used to conducting business electronically using the Web and via monthly telephone meetings using the W3C bridge coupled with an open IRC channel for presentation material. The minutes are captured on-line as the meeting progresses. This process is well understood by all the participants so the need for face-to-face meetings is reduced to the minimum (on the average 1 real meeting a year, plus a smaller meeting during the World Wide Web conference).

The Project Manager will have overall responsibility for the Project in ensuring that the Project achieves its objectives and that the Deliverables are relevant and consistent with the overall objectives of W3C Europe and the IST Programme.

Each Workpackage has a nominated leader who is responsible for its delivery. The Workpackage leader is responsible for all the deliveries of that Workpackage.

It is anticipated that external reporting will be every 6 months with internal reports in the intervening 3-month periods. Face-to-face meetings will occur primarily to finalise the external reports, that is:

Telecon meetings of the Workpackage leaders will occur bi-weekly. Each Work Package will define an appropriate meeting structure.

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9.4 Deliverables list

Deliverable list

The delivery dates all relate to the start date of the Project. A date of Mi is i months from the start of the Project.

Deliverable
No
Deliverable name Workpackage
number
Lead
participant
Estimated
person-months
Delivery type Security Delivery
(project month)
D1.1 Evaluation report for tools needs WP1 INRIA 3 Report Internal M3
D1.2 Validator WP1 INRIA 3 Product Public M6
D1.3 Conversion Tools WP1 INRIA 8 Product Public M12
D1.4 Privacy tools WP1 INRIA 6 Product Public M9
D1.5 Benchmark WP1 INRIA 8 Product Public M12
D1.6 Demonstrator WP1 INRIA 9 Product, document Public M15
D2.1 Evaluation report for activities to be targeted WP2 INRIA 3 Report Internal M9
D2.2 XHTML WP2 INRIA 3 Product Public M12
D2.3 Metadata WP2 INRIA 12 Product Public M21
D2.4 Multimedia WP2 INRIA 12 Product Public M19
D2.5 Device Independence WP2 INRIA 12 Product Public M18
D2.6 XSL WP2 INRIA 6 Product Public M15
D3.1 Analyse Current Office Coverage by the Existing Offices WP3 INRIA 3 Report Internal M3
D3.2 Widen Scope of Office A WP3 INRIA 1 Office Activity Public M15
D3.3 Widen Scope of Office B WP3 INRIA 1 Office Activity Public M18
D3.4 Widen Scope of Office C WP3 INRIA 1 Office Activity Public M18
D4.1 Launch New Office D WP4 INRIA 3 Office Opening Public M6
D4.2 Launch New Office E WP4 INRIA 3 Office Opening Public M12
D4.3 Launch New Office F WP4 INRIA 3 Office Opening Public M1

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Deliverable list (Cont.)
Deliverable
No
Deliverable name Workpackage
number
Lead
participant
Estimated
person-months
Delivery type Security Delivery
(project month)
D4.4 Launch New Office G WP4 INRIA 3 Office Opening Public M18
D5.1 Presentations WP5 INRIA 2 Event Public M4 onwards
D5.2 Handouts WP5 INRIA 5 PR Material Public M4 onwards
D5.3 Stand Decoration WP5 INRIA 1 PR Material Public M3 onwards
D5.4 Demonstrator WP5 INRIA 4 Product, document Public M6 onwards
D6.1 Interop Tour WP6 INRIA 3 Tour Complete Public M10
D6.2 Semantic Tour WP6 INRIA 3 Tour Start Public M13
D7.1 Initial Progress Report WP7 INRIA 1 Report Project Officer M6
D7.2 Second Progress Report WP7 INRIA 1 Report Project Officer M12
D7.3 Third Progress Report WP7 INRIA 1 Report Project Officer M18
D7.4 Final Progress Report WP7 INRIA 1 Report Project Officer M24

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9.5 Project planning and timetable

QUESTION-HOW Project bar chart

Figure 1: QUESTION-HOW Project bar chart

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9.6 Graphical presentation of project components

PERT diagram Question-HOW

Figure 2: Dependency diagram of the project components. See explanations in the text.

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Figure 2 gives a dependency diagram of the major project components. Some highlights and explanation of the diagram:

9.7 Project management

Even though this is a single participant submission, coordination is needed to manage the participation of W3C Offices in the project.

The co-ordinating partner, INRIA, will provide the project and technical management. Management will be done using the Web. Conference calls and face-to-face meeting will be scheduled on a regular basis to ensure the project proceeds to schedule. The management structure has already been described above

The following reports will be produced:

Progress Report (every six months)

This will be a detailed report that describes the technical progress, the effort used and the detailed plans for the next six months. The report will note any deviations from the original work plan, and the reasons. This report will be sent to the Project Officer appointed by the Commission.

Three-Monthly Internal Audit Report

This will be an internal report covering similar ground to the Progress Report. Its purpose will be to detect deviations to the work plan at an early stage. The Internal Audit Reports will form the basis for the Periodic Progress Reports.

The Work Package Managers will be responsible for their own Work Package in terms of direction and coordination of the work of the work by all Offices involved in the Work Package. They will report to the Project Manager on the progress of deliverables and expenditure of effort.

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The Project Manager and Work Package Managers will meet regularly to:

Any conflicts will be resolved by this Group.

10. Clustering

While this project is not participating in a cluster of research projects, any tools developed for Metadata and the W3C Semantic Web Activity as well as the "Semantic Tour" will closely follow, interact with and benefit from W3C's Semantic Web Activity. The current international collaboration between DAML and OIL groups on a Web ontology layer is expected to become a part of the W3C Semantic Web Activity. The W3C Semantic Web Advanced Development efforts are closely connected to the DAML program as well as to other projects and these development efforts can be leveraged to make connections with developers of Semantic Web tools in Europe.

11. Other contractual conditions

Subcontracts

Total: 910,000 Euro

Subcontracts for more that 50kEuro need prior approval from the EC (Project Officer).

It is not possible at this time to define the exact location of each activity; much will also depend on the result of the initial assessment tasks which are part of this Workpackage, and which will define the exact set of tasks. It is only based on those tasks that the current or future subcontractors will finalize their exact involvement in the project. The estimated figures in the table below are included solely for illustrative purposes.

Work Package No Work Package Title CWI RAL GMD Unkown Total
WP1 Develop Mission Critical Solutions 44,000 33,750 56,250 31,455 165,455
WP2 Provide New Tools 88,000 101,250 78,750 62,909 330,909
WP3 Extend Outreach 22,000 11,250 11,250 38,227 82,727
WP4 New European Offices 33,000 11,250 11,250 109,955 165,455
WP5 Infrastructure for Informed Decisions 11,000 11,250 11,250 49,227 82,727
WP6 European Events 22,000 11,250 11,250 38,227 82,727
TOTAL 220,000 180,000 180,000 330,000 910,000

The INRIA person-month costs of a Chercheur confirme A at 134,099 Euro per annum for 2001 and 135,439 Euro for 2002. Taking the average gives a per-month cost of 11,230 euro per person month. The subcontracts to W3C Offices will be based (on average) on this rate. The cost of travel and subsistence and consumables is estimated at 20% of the personal cost.

Although the above average rate is used for planning and estimation of subcontracting costs, all QUESTION-HOW subcontracts and the corresponding invoices will be made on the basis of the actual costs incurred by the subcontractors.

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Travel and Subsistence

Total: 135,000 Euro

A majority of the travel cost will likely be consumed during the two planned "tours". Travel cost may also include travel outside of the EU e.g. for participation in W3C activities such as working group meetings.

Consumables

Total: 150,000 Euro

Consumables include primarily cost for rental of facilities and production of dissimination materials.

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Appendix A: Consortium Description

Contents

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A1. Description of Consortium

This is a single participant proposal by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). W3C is an international industrial non-for-profit consortium which works closely with its membership (more than 460 companies as the time of this writing, 30% in Europe) and the community at large.

W3C was created in October 1994 by the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT-LCS). In April 1995, the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA-France) became the European host. In August 1996, Shonan Fujisawa Campus of Keio University became the third host covering Japan and Korea.

The Project will be run by the W3C Host in Europe at INRIA in France in conjunction with the W3C European Offices.

The W3C European Offices are located at:

The current technical annex refers to three subcontractors only, namely CWI, RAL, and GMD. However, this is for illustrative purposes only. It must be emphasized that all current and future European offices will become subcontractors of the project along the lines described before.

Description of INRIA

INRIA is the French national institute for research in computer science and control; INRIA is a public sector scientific and technological institute which reports to the Ministry of Research and the Ministry of Industry. It has five laboratories in France: Rocquencourt (near Paris), Sophia-Antipolis (near Nice), Rennes, Lorraine located in Nancy and Metz and Rhone-Alpes located in Grenoble and Lyon.

Its missions are:

Research at INRIA is mainly concerned with software and automation engineering, and the institute contributes to the development of the most advanced techniques both in the data processing industry and on a wider scale in application sectors. This research brings together experts in applied mathematics, automation and computer science. The total number of people working at INRIA is about 1,500; 1000 of them being scientists. About 40% (370) are civil servants on INRIA payroll, the remainder are from industry (80), public sector (130), graduate students (350). In addition 370 people are employed as technical and administrative staff. About 100 invited scientists are resident at INRIA at any one time. INRIA has an annual budget of approximately FF 470M (ECU 67M), 20% of which is earned income.

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Description of CWI

CWI is the research institute of the Stichting Mathematisch Centrum -SMC. SMC is a private, non-profit organisation. Founded in 1946, SMC aims at fostering mathematics and computer science research in The Netherlands. CWI receives a subsidy from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO, amounting to about 70% of the institute's total income. The remaining 30% is obtained through national research programmes, international programmes and contract research commissioned by industry.

CWI's mission is twofold: to perform frontier research in mathematics and computer science, and to transfer new knowledge in these fields to society in general and trade and industry in particular.

CWI's mission is realized by several means. In addition to the standard ways of disseminating scientific knowledge, for example through publications, presentations at conferences, organization of workshops and exchange of researchers, CWI actively pursues joint projects with external partners, provides consulting services and actively stimulates the creation of spin-off companies. A technology transfer event is organized annually to promote this side of CWI's activities. Also special efforts are made to make research results known to non-specialist circles, ranging from researchers in other disciplines to the public at large. CWI has many contacts with national organizations for applied research with wide experience in turning research results directly into practical applications. Its researchers are supported by state-of-the-art computing facilities and a library of national importance.

CWI has always been very successful in securing a considerable participation in European research programs (ESPRIT, ACTS, TELEMATICS, BRITE, TMR, IST and others) and has extensive experience in managing these international collaborative research efforts. CWI is also strongly embedded in Dutch university research: about twenty of its senior researchers hold part-time positions as university professors and several projects are carried out in cooperation with university research groups. Annually CWI hosts some 200 visiting scientists from abroad.

CWI has a staff of 210 fte (full time equivalent), 160 of whom are scientific staff. CWI operates on an annual budget of NLG 28M (EURO 13M).

CWI's research is organized in research themes:

  • Networks and Logic - Optimization and Programming
  • Traffic and Communication - Performance and Control
  • Stochastics
  • Signals and Images
  • Interactive Software Development and Renovation
  • Specification and Analysis of Embedded Systems
  • Coordination Languages
  • Evolutionary Computation and Applied Algorithms
  • Applied Analysis and Scientific Computing for partial Differential Equations (formerly Environmental and Porous Media Applications)
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (formerly Industrial Applications)
  • Mathematics of Finance
  • Datamining and Knowledge Discovery
  • Multimedia and Human/Computer Interaction
  • Interactive Information Engineering
  • Quantum Computing and Advanced Systems Research

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Description of CCRLC/RAL

The Central Laboratory to the Research Councils (CLRC) is a UK government laboratory located at three sites in the UK, of which the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is the largest (http://www.clrc.ac.uk/). CLRC employs 1800 staff, of which 1200 are locate at RAL. CLRC had an annual turnover in 1997/98 of 91.9M Pound Sterling, of which 5% came in grants from the EU, while 10% came from commercial contracts, with the remainder from UK Government research grants.

CLRC undertakes research in a wide range of scientific disciplines including Space Science (with ESA and NASA), Laser Technology, Microfabrication, Particle Physics (with CERN), synchrotron radiation, neutron & muon sources to investigate materials, medium energy ion scattering to study metal surfaces, radio propagation, and IT.

The Information Technology Department employs about 120 staff researching and developing IT, including considerable experience in EU projects funded under Esprit II, III, IV, Telematics, RACE and ACTS programmes (http://www.itd.clrc.ac.uk/). The UK Office of W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, is also housed within the IT department of CLRC.

CLRC has produced several spin-off companies to exploit its research products including Vector Fields Ltd, Bookham Technology Ltd and Qudos Technology Ltd. We have also been supportive of start-up companies being created to exploit the research results of Esprit funded projects, such as Oratrix Development BV founded in the Netherlands in 1999 to exploit the results of the Esprit IV project Chameleon on which CLRC participated. However, the main route to exploitation used for CLRC Intellectual Property is to license it to companies with existing market positions, from which we acquire about 1M Pound Sterling income per annum.

Description of GMD

GMD is the national research center for information technology. It is a member of the Hermann von Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers (HGF). GMD conducts research in the following key areas of information technology:

GMD's research and development activities are application-oriented, and the relevant projects closely cooperate with partners from industry and science.

GMD is a non-profit, limited liability private company (GmbH). Its shareholders are the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal States of Hesse, Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia.

Four research institutes are located at GMD's headquarters in Sankt Augustin, two research institutes each are located in Darmstadt and Berlin, and there is a liaison office in Tokyo. Most institute directors are also university professors.

GMD has a staff of 1340 whereof 72 are postdocs, 72 doctoral students, 69 trainees and 209 student research assistants. The annual total budget of GMD is approximately DM 189 million, almost 30% of this amount comes from project work and industrial cooperation.

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A2. Description of Participants

W3C's mission: Leading the Web to its full potential.

The W3C was founded to develop common protocols to enhance the interoperability and lead the evolution of the World Wide Web. Leading the World Wide Web's evolution means staying ahead of a significant wave of applications, services, and social changes. For W3C to effectively lead such dramatic growth, at a time when a "Web Year" has shortened to three months, it must demonstrate exceptional agility, focus and diplomacy. To this end, the Consortium fulfills a unique combination of roles traditionally ascribed to quite different organizations.

Like its partner standards body, the Internet Engineering Task Force [IETF], W3C is committed to developing open, technically sound specifications backed by running sample code. Like other information technology consortia, W3C represents the power and authority of hundreds of developers, researchers, and users. Hosted by research organizations, the Consortium is able to leverage the most recent advances in information technology.

Specifications developed within the Consortium must be formally approved by the Membership. Consensus is reached after a specification has proceeded through the review stages of Working Draft, Candidate Recommendation, Proposed Recommendation, and Recommendation. As new issues arise from Members, resources are reallocated to new areas to ensure that W3C remains focused on topics most critical to the Web's interoperability and growth.

Host Institutions and Members

The W3C was formally launched in October 1994 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Computer Science [MIT LCS]. Moving beyond the Americas, the Consortium established a European presence in partnership with France's National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control [INRIA] in April 1995. As the Web's influence continued to broaden internationally, the resulting growth in W3C Membership created the need for an Asian host. In September 1996, Keio University in Japan became the Consortium's third host institution.

The Consortium's real strength lies in the broad technical expertise of its Membership. W3C currently has over 460 commercial, industrial and academic Members worldwide, including hardware and software vendors, telecommunications companies, content providers, corporate users, and government and academic entities.

W3C provides a vendor-neutral forum for its Members to address Web-related issues. Working together with its staff and the global Web community, the Consortium aims to produce free, interoperable specifications and sample code. Funding from Membership dues, public research funds, and external contracts underwrite these efforts.

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Staff and contact information

W3C is led by Director Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web; and Chairman Jean-Francois Abramatic (INRIA). With more than 30 years' combined expertise in a wide array of computer-related fields, including real-time communications, graphics, and text and image processing. Berners-Lee and Abramatic are well prepared to lead the Consortium's efforts in spearheading the global evolution of the Web.

The Consortium's technical staff includes full- and part-time employees, visiting engineers from Member organisations, consultants, and students from more than 16 countries worldwide. W3C staff works with the Advisory Committee, the press, and the broader Web community to promote W3C's agenda.

The European Offices have been established in vendor-neutral publically funded institutes with a strong commitment to the Web. All are members of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) as is INRIA. In consequence, they have considerable experience of working together through the exchange of Fellows and joint European activities. Professor Bob Hopgood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (the W3C UK Office) was responsible for WP2 of the Esprit Project W3C-LA that established the European Offices.

Background on Daniel Dardailler: QUESTION-HOW Project Manager

Daniel Dardailler joined the W3C team in Sophia-Antipolis, France, in July 1996. Prior to that, he was acting as Software Architect for the X Window System Consortium, in Cambridge U.S.A, where he was responsible for the Motif toolkit and others CDE (Unix Desktop) components.

He is the site manager of the W3C INRIA-Sophia Antipolis site and was recently appointed Deputy Director for W3C Europe.

His technical duties include Technical Management of the Web Accessibility Initiative and activity lead for the Quality Assurance of W3C Recommendations.

Daniel holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Nice/Sophia-Antipolis (1989).

Background information for Philipp Hoschka, W3C Domain Leader

Philipp Hoschka is the Leader of the W3C Architecture Domain, Activity Leader for the "Television and the Web" Activity at W3C, and Chair of the "Television and the Web" W3C Interest Group. He served as editor of the W3C Recommendation SMIL 1.0, and as chair of the working group that developed SMIL. He also chaired W3C workshops on Real-Time Multimedia and the Web, Push Technology and Television and the Web.

Before joining the W3C in January 1996, Philipp was a member of the high speed networking research group at INRIA.

Philipp received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France. He also holds a Master's Degree in Computer Science from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.

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Appendix B: Consortium Preparation Forms

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Last Update $Date: 2002/08/21 14:25:17 $