Developments in European information issues: Networks and relays – Services – Products, November 2001

Enlarging the enlargement site

The Commission's web site on enlargement has been revised and updated at http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/. Access to the content is either via a clickable map for specific country information or through a series of drop down menus covering topics (introduction, negotiations, chapters, pre-accession strategy); news (speeches, press releases, media, newsletter); library (key documents, progress reports from 1998-2000); and contacts (addresses, links). The country section includes detailed maps, a country profile, an overview of the key political developments and documents, and useful web links for the country concerned. For example, the links for Malta include Team Malta at DG Enlargement, the Maltese National Statistical Office and Government home page. The site already contains a wealth of usefully collated material but it will also mount the latest round of progress reports for 2001 which are due to be published on 13 November.

Commission site map

Unlike many other complex web sites, Europa has not until now had a site map to aid navigation. Even now, strictly speaking, it is the Commission rather than the whole of the Europa content that is covered but nonetheless the development is to be welcomed as an additional way of tracking down elusive information hidden under several layers of pages. The four main headings - organisation of the Commission, key issues, areas of activities and services - can be opened up to show more detail, or collapsed as required. Visit http://europa.eu.int/comm/sitemap/index_en.htm to test it out.

European Studies section for SOSIG

The Social Science Information Gateway which evaluates and catalogues internet resources has been working with the University of Birmingham to produce a European studies section providing country information. The first phase is due to go public shortly and will be a simple listing by country of the resources available. Almost fifty countries are included, though not all are currently live, so this is far broader in content than EU or even the EU and applicant countries. The next stage will be a gradual move to include a full sub-set of SOSIG subject headings under the country heading. See the SOSIG gateway at http://www.sosig.ac.uk for developments.

SME TechWeb

CORDIS has launched a new web site for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) at http://www.cordis.lu/sme/. This replaces the previous SME site and aims to provide a single contact point for online information and advice about EU research. It should be of particular use to innovative SMEs which want to establish international links. It provides information on the Fifth Framework Programme's Specific Measures for SMEs, exploratory awards, and Economic and Technological Intelligence actions, together with examples of success stories. All the necessary forms to submit a proposal are available from the site as well as guidance notes on how to complete them. A glossary is provided to explain EU terminology on research to those unused to Eurospeak. The site is to be updated regularly with the latest news of events, calls for proposals and regulatory changes. There are also links to other online sources of advice and information such as marketing and training which should prove useful to SMEs with a research and technology orientation.

Safer Internet

Commission Press Release IP/01/1545 of 7 November 2001 (available from the RAPID database at http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh/) draws attention to the new call for proposals under the Safer Internet Action Plan issued on 1 November. The Safer Internet Action Plan is running for four years from 1999-2002 with a total budget of €25 million and seeks projects which will promote awareness of the safer use of the Internet. Funded projects highlighted are ones covering content rating systems, filtering software and hotlines to report illegal content, especially child pornography. More information about the Action Plan can be found on the Information Society web site at http://europa.eu.int/information_society/programmes/iap/index_en.htm. While the emphasis is frequently on the protection of minors, it is not just children who fall foul of Internet abuse. The Commission itself is one of the victims. The web address of the now defunct database EUDOR has been colonised by a rather nasty pornographic site which has nothing whatsoever to do with document delivery. Information professionals can in all innocence not only log in themselves but - worse still - direct others to the site through outdated links, so check your web pages and remove any EUDOR links you have. Small changes to URLs can also make a major difference. The helpful Open Up Europe web site was set up by a group of MEPs to create greater openness by making draft documents easily available and thus opening up to the public at large the debate and discussion within the European Parliament. Its success is evidenced by the fact that these documents are now available from the official EP web site at http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs_all/committees/committeeslist.htm/ and it is no longer just experienced lobbyists who can follow and try to influence developments. A small but apparently innocuous difference in the web address for Open Up Europe might however inadvertently lead you once again to an extremely unpleasant site so please ensure that the address you are using is the current one, http://www.openupeurope.net/

Written questions in CELEX

An announcement from the CELEX database states that as from 4th October all the written questions and answers published in the Official Journal will be loaded into CELEX. The latest update is given as the issue OJ C 235 E dated 18.9.2001. In fact the issue OJ C 235 E is dated 21.8.2001 but its contents are indeed there. This constitutes a major improvement in the currency of this data.

Parliamentary questions are a sector of CELEX that many dismiss as of little use. While there are certainly some rather strange questions, including such favourites as the Commission's intentions on the harmonisation of garden gnome design (the answer, by the way, is simply “No”) it can frequently provide the clue to resolve a difficult enquiry, signalling for example the introduction of a proposal for legislation in the near future or offering a non-Eurospeak access route to the official terminology.

In practice now for written questions in CELEX, where previously there was simply a bibliographic reference with analytic data, from 1997 the text of the answer is also included though in HTML format only. From 1998 onwards there is also a PDF option.

The CELEX team expects from now on to be sent the data files from the European Parliament at the same time as they are sent for publication in the Official Journal. The indexing of the questions with EUROVOC descriptors however is an issue which remains to be resolved. Gaps in other texts from the European Parliament are also acknowledged with the CELEX team and the European Parliament working together to enable the missing data to be loaded as soon as possible.