The IST Advisory Group (ISTAG) - the advisory body to the European Commission in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT or IST) stresses in its latest report that “missing the strategic importance of software technology as a key enabling technology will lead to a significant drawback for global competitiveness.” The report mainly recommends: “A Strategic Agenda for Software Technologies in Europe should be created in cooperation with Industry, Academia and Public sector. The agenda should outline the strength from a European perspective and how we can renew and strengthen it. Common goals and needs in the short, medium and long term should be described. It should also describe what actions should be implemented to achieve these goals and needs and how we can, in a smarter way, make use of existing efforts, resources and facilities. The agenda should also draw up proposals on how the strategic work should be organized, run and quality assured”. The first version of this Agenda should be delivered before mid-2013.
The full report is available for download at: http://kwz.me/SD

Following a restructuring and streamlining of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), seven departments have been created to represent the main thematic areas of research. The departments are responsible for coordinating and promoting the scientific and technology transfer activities of CNR. DIITET will focus on the domains of manufacturing, ICT, energy and transportation and will supervise the activities of 22 institutes. The main objective of DIITET will be to promote interdisciplinary research in key sectors of the European digital agenda and Horizon 2020 with particular attention to the development of those technologies that will ensure secure cities and communities, smart energy and intelligent mobility and transportation systems. Areas of importance will include ICT, energy, advanced materials, sustainable mobility and advanced manufacturing and processing. Dr Conti is currently Head of the Ubiquitous Internet Lab of the CNR Institute for Informatics and Telematics (IIT). He has published widely in the fields of design modelling and performance evaluation of computer networks pervasive systems and social networks. He is Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier Computer Communications and Associate Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing. He is the founder of successful conference and workshop series such as ACM RealMAN, IEEE AOC, ACM MobiOpp, and IFIP/IEEE SustainIT.

The last-of-the-year issue of the journal Computer Networks, entitled “The Web We Live In”, has just been published. The issue reprints the first two papers published on Google (written by Google’s founders in 1998), and has additional papers on the evolution of the Web and Web Science, a paper on economic aspects of the Web, comprehensive surveys on information privacy and social networks, a description of how the Web combines the virtual with the real, and what the Web has done for education. A paper on security raises the question: Do we already have more security technology than we are willing to live with?

Informatics Europe through the Department Evaluation initiative introduces a new service aimed at the assessment of research quality in the fields of Informatics, Computer Science and IT. The service is offered to Informatics Europe members and to all other Departments, Faculties, Schools and Research Institutes in Informatics, Computing, etc in Europe and beyond. It is characterized by an exclusive, peer-review driven evaluation process based on the standards and experiences of Informatics Europe.