The European COST TIST (Cooperation On Science and Technology - Telecommunications and Information Science and Technology) Programme encompasses a number of strategic European concerted research actions concerning future technologies and services in the fields of Antennas, Radio Propagation, Wireless, Mobile, and Optical networking & components, Speech technology, Biometrics and Security, Health implications of electromagnetic fields, User aspects, and Knowledge and Information management. The Area is managed in the COST Office, in close liaison with the 6th FP IST Programme.

It was decided to launch 6 new Actions in 2005: COST 294, COST 295, COST 296, COST 297, COST 298, and COST 299.

COST 298 Action is called Participation in the Broadband Society. It was approved on 14 June 2005, entered in force on 14 October 2005 and will end on 22 January 2010. Chair: Dr Bartolomeo Sapio, Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, Roma, Italy.

The main objective of this Action is to create new knowledge about users’ creativity and to facilitate their empowerment in a broadband information society.

The Action’s objectives are also as follows:

• to examine the modalities in which users actually use ICTs, to discover their current forms of creativity;
• to look ahead to technology related developments in the more medium term;
• to suggest new approaches and methodologies for constructing a more user-driven model of innovation in order to overcome the limitations of current models of ‘user-centred’ development;
• to produce a new phase in interdisciplinary cooperation.

This would provide the basis for conceptually integrating the various ways of assessing the experience of broadband technologies from the perspective of different disciplines.

The Action will identify relevant technology-related developments that are already being planned, or in the case of regulation, have been approved. This will enable the Action to address issues over the medium-term time horizon. The Action will also organise workshops and conferences for the research and development community.

There will be a number of short-term scientific missions. Although these have yet to be decided, they could include visits that enable further gathering of information about specific technological developments in the pipeline, ones that develop the dialogue with the community developing ICTs, ones that enable Action members to develop a sub-topic of the workgroups’ interest (e.g. as strategic case studies), etc.

The primary audience is the global scientific community. Although this will first and foremost mean those researchers within this field, the members’ interdisciplinary aspirations mean that the Action also wants to reach out to a broader audience, not only in universities and research centres but also in European and other scientific bodies and other COST Actions that have direct synergies with this Action (COST A20, COST A22, EURESCOM, SOCQUIT, e-Living, La Maison des Sciences de l'homme, etc.).

Since the aim is to develop insights that can be applied to everyday use, methods for addressing both the commercial sector (e.g. telecom and other operators, ICT manufacturers, services providers) and policy-makers have to be sought. This requires the Action  to evaluate diverse channels (e.g. workshops in Brussels for policy-makers might be one route). It will also entail initiating a dialogue with those potentially interested parties to see how the findings of the Action can be translated into a form that engages with their own approaches. Only in this way can a truly effective dissemination strategy be achieved. It is imperative not to neglect the students and new researchers in relevant fields if this work is to have an impact in the long term since they will be the next generation of key players in this domain of broadband ICTs.

COST 298 Action held its workshop on 31 March-1 April 2006 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Russia was represented by Dr. Olga Vershinskaya, Head of Directorate of Socio-Economic Programs, Institute of the Information Society. She made a presentation “e-Portrait of an Individual” within the e-Actors Working Group session. The presentation will be available on IIS web-site by the end of April 2006.

Dr. Vershinskaya suggested that another COST 298 workshop be held in Moscow in May 2007. This idea was supported by the members of the above working group. Institute of the Information Society declared their readiness to be a workshop organizer.