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New role for the Programme Advisory Committee
The Eurescom Programme Advisory Committee (PAC) was set up in 1994 to assist the Board of Governors in decisions on the orientation and priorities of the Eurescom Work Programmes. With Eurescom’s new business model, the tasks for the PAC have changed significantly. Besides assisting in the assessment and prioritisation of proposals to the Study Programme, the PAC will be more active in identifying new business opportunities and suggesting how to use the mechanisms of Eurescom in growing these. In the course of moving to a new role, the PAC has proposed a new approach for launching projects as a complement to the “bottom-up” approach used by Eurescom for a long time. Such new projects called “flagship projects” reflect that these projects are part of the strategic agenda of the members and supported by the decision makers at the shareholder companies. Typical characteristics of such projects are that they address boundary issues where the participants have to co-operate to find solutions. They are also closely related to business strategies and have business-line approval and buy-in to ensure the contribution is widely recognised in the parent companies. Flagship projects do not necessarily have a long-term perspective. They can be near-term, having a close-to-market perspective. With this new concept at hand, the PAC together with Eurescom staff has established a dialogue with the newly established Fireworks Group, a group set up by operators for profiling standards. Together with the Fireworks Group, a project on “Interconnection of Multimedia Service Networks” has recently been launched. The PAC has also suggested using the Study Programme to kick-start other projects, being run as Eurescom-internal projects, FP6, or CELTIC projects. A first pilot according to this approach is a study on next-generation operation support systems. This introduces a further work area for the PAC: discussion and advising on the most appropriate way of funding projects of telecom network operators. This can be done either through self-funding or by using the European publicly funded R&D programmes and related European initiatives, including the positioning of Eurescom in these programmes and initiatives. Please send us your comments on this article. |
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