The 2013 GSE Executive Club in Venice motivated the participating IT executives to make themselves "Ready for Tomorrow". In addition to important technology trends, such as mobile computing, cloud computing and the big data analytics revolution, relevant political and organizational topics, such as Europe's Digital Agenda were on the agenda. PARADIGMA's managing director, Rudolf Bauer presented the highlites of this political initiative.
Recognizing the increasing potential of the IT industry to stimulate overall economic growth and to generate employment, the European Commission developed the "Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE)". The DAE has identified seven priority areas for IT development and proposed a detailed action plan in each of them. The DAE provides a range of programs to fund appropriate research & development initiatives to implement the action plan.
Since the inception of the DAE its impact on the economy as well as the attainment of its objectives are closely monitored. The presentation showed the main characteristics of the DAE and its objectives; gave an overview of the current and future available funding programs and illustrated some of the results accomplished so far. Implications of the DAE for GSE members were assessed and opportunities to participate in the programs of the Digital Agenda have been outlined.