e-EIONET
Group Collaboration
and e-Communities
in the Environment Sector
in Europe
Hannu Saarenmaa
European Environment Agency
with European Commission DG Enterprise and DG Enlargement
and Finsiel S.p.A., European Dynamics S.A., TietoEnator
European Environment
Agency
• Through provision of information to
legislators, decision makers and the
public improve environment
• The environmental information centre
of the European Union
• Decentralised, independent
• Small nucleus (100 people, 20 MEUR
budget) of a large network, the
EIONET European Environment
Information and Observation
Network - www.eionet.eu.int
Outline
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
e-Europe and e-Government
e-EIONET background
e-EIONET architecture
Group collaboration features
Data management issues
Integration and development issues
Lessons learnt
e-Europe
European Union
• Network State
– 2% of GNP used at European level,
vs. 6% at federal US level
• Harmonisation of legislation
– 90% of new laws on environment
affected by EU directives
• Environment biggest issue in the
enlargement
Internet will drive the
economy
•
all sectors, all businesses
•
•
•
increase productivity
create new businesses
open global markets
The Internet is a key factor for growth,
competitiveness and employment
2
Internet penetration:
EU behind the USA
Discrepancies in Europe
60
50
Internet penetration
(1998-2000E)
40
30
20
10
0
P
I
E
F
IRL
A
B
D
NL
UK
DK
S
FIN
EU USA
5
Source: Morgan, Stanley, Dean, Witter
Mobiles: EU ahead of the
USA
Mobile subscribers (million)
160
EU
EU mobile
liberalisation
140
120
100
80
USA
60
40
20
0
1992
Source:
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
FT Mobile Communications
USA: Cellular Telecoms Industry Association
1998
1999
6
The EU has played a major
role in these achievements
•
•
•
mobile communications - GSM
digital TV
1998 telecoms liberalisation
But there are still major obstacles in Europe:
communication prices, venture capital,
entrepreneurship
10
Objectives
• bring every citizen, school, business and
administration on-line - quickly
• create a digitally literate and
entrepreneurial Europe
• ensure an inclusive information society
11
How?
• address key areas of action at European level can make a
difference
• collaborative efforts by Member States, Commission and
private sector
• 10 key areas selected for action
12
Action
1. European youth into the digital age
2. Cheaper Internet access
3. Accelerating e-commerce
4. Fast Internet for researchers and students
5. Smart cards for secure electronic access
13
Action
6. Risk capital for high-tech SMEs
7. eParticipation for the disabled
8. Healthcare online
9. Intelligent transport
10. Government online
14
e-Government
Government Online Priorities
• Ensure easy access to at least four
essential types of public data in
Europe.
• Ensure consultation and feedback
via the Internet on major political
initiatives.
• Ensure that citizens have electronic
access to basic interactions.
Reporting Burden
• Each year, each member state has to provide
37,000 figures to various international
environmental reporting systems, essentially
answering that many questions.
• Only 17% of these figures are related to
evaluating the effectiveness of any particular
EU policy.
• There are 57 sectoral committees in the
environment sector alone.
• Most of them have developed their own data
collection and applications.
Currently: Ad-hoc Overlapping Data
Exchange on Email, Floppy, Fax, Letter
The Public and Decision-Makers
EuroStat
EC
DG
EEA
OECD
UNEP
ETC
DG
NRC
NFP and other National Authorities
2001: From Data Exchange to
Information Provision
The Public and Decision-Makers
EuroStat
EC
DG
DG
EEA
OECD
UNEP
ETC
EIONET
Server
NRC
NFP and other National Authorities
The
EIONET
Value
Chain
EIONET Supports the Entire Range of
Information Management from Data to Decisions
Newscast
Public
Access
Document
management
Decision
Support
Systems
Knowledge
management
Data Mart/
Warehouse
Databases
The Famous Pyramid
of Information
Decision
Judgment
VALUES
Analysis
(Indicators)
TOOLS
Integration
(Ontology)
Data &
Observations
1
4 6
TEXT
DATA3
8
9
7
1
1
INFO
Background:
How Did e-EIONET
Come About?
General Business
Requirements for EIONET
• A2A e-government network, with public gateways
• An integrative generic infrastructure for applications
• Support the collaboration process of integrated
analysis on state of environment, consultations, and
reporting on it
– Project coordination, management of information
overload, making life easier, achieving savings,
other practical benefits...
• Streamline environmental data- and workflows
– Removing duplication and reporting burden
• Vehicle for coordinating international and national
initiatives, interoperability with other economic sectors,
creating new opportunities
EIONET Origin and
Facets
• EIONET was set up at the same time and on
basis of same legislation as the EEA in 1990.
– EEA became operational in 1994.
• EIONET is a huge, political e-community
• EIONET is both an organisational network and an
electronic network.
• This presentation only discusses the latter
aspect: e-EIONET.
– e-EIONET became operational in 1997.
– e-EIONET operates as an Extranet on
Internet.
IDA Interoperability
Pyramid
Develop
applications
(projects)
Harmonise content
Support
Select and adopt generic services
Use Network Infrastructure
Phasing of the EIONET
Build-up
• Basic infrastructure
– 15 Member State NFPs 1996-1998
– 9 European Topic Centres 1997-1998
– 10 Phare countries 1997-1999
– 2 Phare countries 1999-2000
• Applications 1999• In summary, only the basic infrastructure is now
available
– A new phase is at hand for application
development, new strategy approved
Public wwwservices
and news
broad casting
EIONET Zones
Public
International institutions
NRC
Core Extranet
of 33 sites
with
servers
Full EIONET
of 600 nodes
with username access
NGO
R&D
projects
Media
ETC
Partners ETC
NFP
EU
Institutions
EEA
Phare
Phare
Topic Links
Contractors
Special Interest Networks
EnviroScientists
Windows and
corporate portals
EIONET Architecture
EIONET the Mother of Extranets
“Interest Groups”
organise collaboration
of projects
ETC Partner
NRC
Phare Topic Link
ETC
NFP
EEA
Phare
NFP
NRC
NRC
Extranet: Password access
EuroIntranet
Contractors
Phare NRC
NFP NFP
Node Architecture
ETC
EEA
Firewall
TEN-155
TESTA-II
Router
Local
LAN
Internet
Public
server
General
public
EIONET
server
e-EIONET Technology
• Internet backbone
– Speed is still a problem; from public Internet to
TEN-155; TESTA II
• UNIX Server Computers
– Old (m’97) DEC, HP, IBM, Sun (ES450) servers
good 3 more years
– Linux for new projects
• Routers of Cisco, firewall of IBM, local setups
• Software server engines
– Netscape SuiteSpot 3.5 servers (to be phased
out)
– Open source servers to replace them (Apace,
Zope, MySQL, ...)
• CIRCA 2.1.5 from European Dynamics
• Open to all desktop applications
e-EIONET Functionality Layers
Personal
Workplace
Library
Tool
Group
Collab App
DataMgmt
Tools
Corporate
Portal App
Workflow
Tool
Other
Tools
Generic services www, directory, email lists,
news, search, SQL, replication ...
Internet and its Communication
Protocols TCP/IP, http, ldap, nntp, smtp
33 Server Computers across Europe
Generic Services, Common Tools, and
Applications
e-EIONET
Group Collaboration
Services
About
100
“Interest
Groups”
on 33
Servers
CIRCA
Services
Sophisticated Multilingual Document
Management
Don’t print, don’t email, but upload, share and search
• EIONET’s most
important service
• Users control
content
• 4600 documents
in EEA alone
• Versions
• Languages
Messaging
“If the only tool you know is a hammer, the world soon looks like nail.”
• Mailing lists @eionet.eu.int (about 20 lists now)
– Functional mailboxes at nodes
• Email contributes to information overload...
– Encourages unstructured communication
– Organisation of material left to recipient
– No history for new participants
– Attachments clog mail servers and spread viruses
• ....but EIONET users still want it, so...
– Email attachment to be connected to CIRCA
document management
– Roles to be defined in site directories and to be used
as basis of dynamic maling lists, such as nrciw@nfp-dk.eionet.eu.int
– CIRCA user classes:authors.eionettelematics@eea.eionet.eu.int
Discussions, Newsgroups, Joint
Reviews
• Newsgroups and services available in
CIRCA
– HTTP interface to discussions
• Connecting discussions with documents
– Announce postings in newsgroups
– Threaded discussions on documents
– Need to integrate discussions with
documents (like Amazon.com)
• WebDAV
– To be specified
Meeting and Dissemination Services
African village metaphor: “The world is one big meeting.”
• New ways of working together needed
– Meetings very resource-consuming,
communication needs escalate
• Meeting service available in each IG
– Virtual (chatroom) meetings available
– Meeting service more useful across IGs
• Announcements service available on EIONET’s
public gateways
– Provided by Zope modules
– Freqently Asked Questions service at Network
Management Centre
• Internet-based videoconference easy and cheap, but
not used
Directory Services
The n-directory problem
• LDAP is the key component in EIONET infrastructure
– Usernames, user information and preferences
• New features
– Self-registration of users to site directories
– Organisation object
– Roles
– Expertise
– Integration with email lists
• Re-using user information in EIONET Directory?
– We could maintain the information at the original
source at NFPs, ETCs
– Address database, CDS, and sitedir integration the
goal
Replication
• Copy entire IGs between servers
• Copy directory and newsgroup entries between servers
– All sitedirs will be copied to NMC
• Replication of individual documents later
NFP
ETC
EEA
NMC
NFP
Search
• Search within one IG is surprisingly powerful
• When we have 33 nodes and several projects on each
of them, how do we find information?
– On each IG there is a search facility
– All nodes’ public pages searched
– Push technology pilot scans the Catalog Servers of
all sites
• ”What is new” across all Interest Groups
– Customisable welcome page: Towards ”MyCIRCA”
EEA-IW
S
Request for
Consultation
1
The activities of
the
prototype
consultation
process
include:
 request for
consultation,
 answer
request,
 make
decision and
 summarize.
Workflow
NFP-*
-
+
Request for
Consultation
Be Informed
NRC-*-IW
NRC-*-IW-PCP
Answer
Answer
NFP-*
Approval
2
Be Informed
-
+
EEA-IW
Approval
3
-
4
+
+
Summarize
- fork
- join
E
+
1
-
- conditional branch
The Outcome of e-EIONET
Collaboration Services:
Corporate Knowledge Management
Use
Apply
Modify
Explicit
knowledge
TOOLS
i.e. CIRCA
Analyse
Organise
Share
Applied (tacit)
knowledge
Create
Identify
CONTENT
System and
technology
support
to manage
knowledge
Collect
Store
Internalising by doing
Support
Helpdesk and Training
After the training the users...."
•Network Management Centre
http://nmc.eionet.eu.int/
•Four levels of Helpdesk
•1st level is IG Leader or Secretary:
•allow users, control access, structure
library and discussions
•2nd level at NMC helpdesk@eionet.eu.int
•3rd level at CIRCA vendor
•4th level by hw/sw vendors
•Training programme
•Nine different courses, offered twice a year,
online registration, ...
•EIONET Newsletter
Data Management Issues
The EIONET Value Chain
Operational
Databases in
Member
Countries’
NRCs
Distributed
Data Marts
Information
Warehouse
ETC
EEA
NFP
“Data - Information- Knowlegde”
EU Conventions OECD EUROSTAT DGs
EDR
Reference Centre
Information
DW
Citizens
ROD
Reporting request
definitions
Data definitions
Dissemination
SAS
SQL
SQL
XML
SQL
AE
AQ
XML-
IW
CIRCLE
EIONET
Data Flow
Architecture
2000
DTD Definitions
XSL Definitions
Combine, analyse
data
XML
XML
XML
CIRCLE
Import, select, transfer
data
IW-DEMAE-DEM
AQ-DEM
Manual
input
XML
XML
National
datasources
(NRC etc)
I
W
Conversion
XML
XML
Collecter/ AirbaseReporter
dem
AE
AQ
SQL
Distributed
objects...
...InfoSleuth and
EDEN style
Integration and
Development Issues
Generic
Portal
Services
and
Toolkit
Integrate with the Public Web Site
• Share technologies and platforms
• Share document metainformation and theme
classification
• Differ in content
EEA
Intranet
content
EIONET
content
(drafts)
EnviroWindows
content
E2RC
Internet
content
• Share much of the user base: integrated views needed
EEA
users
EIONET users
EnviroWindows
users
E2RC
Internet
users
EIONET
Links with
Other
Networks
European
Community
ClearingHouse
Mechanism
under the
Convention on
Biological
Diversity is
hosted on
EIONET
EnviroWindows:
EIONET’s Arm for Outreach to Private Sector,
NGOs and International Organisations
EIONET News - on Push Technology
Lessons Learnt in
e-Community Building
General Success Factors in
Network Building
• It is easy to start a network, but difficult to
keep alive
• Build the organisation and technology
hand in hand: Managers must understand
technology and technologists must listen
to users
• Understand users' contraints
• Respect rights of data custodians
• Provide opportunity -- the IS lives by
opportunity
• Then, persistence
Building Institutions
• Network organisations can not be managed -but they can be led
• Network organisations are normally based on
voluntary cooperation -- motivated by
opportunity
• By nature, network organisations are slow -- a
top down drive difficult to create
• The traditional approach for defining user
needs first and then finding technological
solutions does not normally work
• Demonstration, interaction, and iteration works
• Spread of best practice -- make the best the
norm -- works
• Providing a political forum works
Building Network
Infrastructure
• Model the organisational network in
technological infrastructure -- ownership
• Build services that provide opportunity
• Learn how to build on each others' work
• Build infrastucture -- open interfaces
• Build gateways -- navigate by metainformation
• Allow contributions -- build dialogue and
platform for opportunity
• Personalise and integrate
• Don't build applications
Building Content Value
Chains for Communities
• Information society consists of communities
(i.e., networks of people and organisations)
• Content can not be the same for all
• We have tried mass personalisation: How to
define Special Interest Groups without
excessive fragmentation? What is the critical
mass?
• Personalisation via community portals
• Involve content publishing expertise in all teams
• Avoid information overload
• Key in value chain: From information exchange
to information provision
• When is information sustainable?
SUMMARY
• e-EIONET is a major player in European eGovernment and a large e-Community
• Basic infrastructure erected
– Migrate specific applications to e-EIONET infra
• Core service Internet-based document management
– Success, but spread of best practice still needed
• Harmonisation of data and value chains being
tackled
– Tools and content hand in hand, all topic areas
• e-EIONET is positioned as
– corporate memory
– integrative corporate portal for users
– integrative generic platform for applications and
streamlining European data exchange
– platform for opportunity