ISTOK brings together the European and Russian ICT communities

ISTOK initiative has been proposed by European and Russian partners and supported by the European Commission in order to create EU-Russian ICT virtual community, to identify priorities for deeper strategic ICT cooperation between Russia and the European Union and to help the European Commission to link FP7 ICT calls to joint European-Russian ICT priorities.

As part of the preparation of the European Framework Programme, FP7, the European Commission would like to identify common needs and opportunities for strategic cooperation between European and Russian research in the ICT domain. Europe, as well as Russia needs to strengthen it’s scientific and technology base in ICT, to drive and stimulate innovation through ICT use and to ensure that ICT progress is rapidly transformed into benefits for businesses, industry, government and citizens. 
The ISTOK project was initiated by European and Russian partners and supported by the European Union in order to identify priorities for deeper strategic ICT cooperation between Russia and the European Union and to help the European Commission to link FP7 ICT calls to joint European-Russian ICT priorities.
Throughout the 21-month project duration, the consortium contracted to implement the project - inno AG (Germany, coordinator), Institute of the System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Foundation Sophia Antipolis (France),  Russian Technology Transfer Network (Russia) – will:

• propose recommendations for EU-Russian ICT-collaboration taxonomy
• analyze strengths and weaknesses of Russian and European ICT R&D areas
• cross-compare European/Russian needs and priorities in order to detect those which are the most relevant for further EU-RU ICT co-operation.

This analytical work will be driven by a high-level ICT experts group, composed of Russian and European ICT experts, in order to contribute to the definition of a global scientific EU-Russian cooperation strategy in the ICT sector and set-up of the dialogue with broad communities both in Russia and  in the European Union. The awareness raising brokerage actions in Europe and Russia on a large and medium scale (conferences, seminars, workshops, internet open forums) will be organised to booster the joint research initiatives for FP7.
As a result of the implementation of ISTOK, there will be up to eight areas within ICT R&D that will be recommended to the European Union as strategic priorities for Russian-European collaboration of FP7.
In addition, the Russian and European ICT community will benefit from a large number of quantitative and qualitative advantages:

• access to a competence platform providing information relevant to the EU-RU potential cooperation in the ICT domain, as well as to a database with at least 2.000 key ICT contacts from Europe and Russia,
• participation in the open consultation campaign (via 10 e-Forum) in order to directly contribute to the  definition of the EU-RU cooperation strategy within FP7, 
• better understanding and larger involvement in the FP7 programme (access to know-how, complementary competences, scientific exchanges, funding),
• participation in the 5 large and medium scale events allowing partners from different countries and different ICT backgrounds to meet and work together,
• identification of potential partners to boost initiation in joint collaboration proposals for FP7 calls.