First PICASSO EU-US Expert Group Meeting – 20th May 2016

The first cornerstones for new avenues in EU-US ICT collaboration have been successfully determined: more than 50 EU and US experts from Big Data, 5G Networks, Internet of Things/Cyber Physical Systems and the Policy field met at the first PICASSO Expert Groups meeting, hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the Department of Commerce at Washington, D.C., USA, on the 20^th of May 2016. The Expert Groups exchanged ways to enhance transatlantic collaboration, priorities, and the next steps.

Overview:

The aim of the meeting was to reinforce EU-US ICT collaboration and support the policy dialogue on pre-competitive research and innovation related to the societal challenges – smart cities, smart energy, smart transportation and in key enabling technologies: 5G Networks, Big Data, Internet of Things and Cyber Physical Systems. The meeting presented a panorama of the ICT landscape and programmes currently underway in Europe and the US as well as programmes in the rest of the world. Existing funding opportunities for collaboration were highlighted. The views of the three EU-US ICT Expert Groups on 5G Networks, Big Data and IoT/CPS were presented identifying gaps and opportunities, a map of challenges, open problems, and the needs for supporting policy measures and strategic EU-US initiatives (both policy and research related). Key actors, i.e. NIST, NSF, IMS, were invited to highlight existing opportunities for collaboration.

In order to assess policy issues that touch upon the domains in the focus of PICASSO, the EU-US ICT Policy Expert Group took the results of the three technical ICT expert groups into account. A first horizontal overarching policy issue, Privacy and Data Protection aspects relevant for EU/US collaboration in these domains was addressed both during the morning session of the ICT Policy Expert Group and during the afternoon plenary.