The e-Infrastructure Reflection Group organises workshops twice a year in collaboration with the EU presidency country. Workshops are open for all public and they function as incubators for feeding new information and trends into the e-IRG plenum work. The last workshop was held in Zürich (CH) on 24th – 25th of April, 2008.
The main objective of the e-Infrastructure initiative is to support the creation of a political, technological and administrative framework for an easy and cost-effective shared use of distributed electronic resources across Europe. Particular attention is directed towards grid computing, storage, and networking.
The e-Infrastructure Reflection Group was founded to define and recommend best practices for the pan-European electronic infrastructure efforts. It consists of official government delegates from all the EU countries. The e-IRG produces white papers, roadmaps and recommendations, and analyses the future foundations of the European Knowledge Society.
Important issues within the e-IRG are currently:
- e-infrastructures in European Commission's Framework Programme 7
- a policy for resource sharing
- a registry/repository for European resources
- coordination of new national and EU funding programs
- better links and synergies between Europe and other regions (e.g. USA, Japan) engaged in similar activities
