The e-IRG is the body with responsibility for developing roadmap documents to provide a view of the technical, administrative and socioeconomic issues around the e-Infrastructures that support European research.
The importance of electronic infrastructures for European research, innovation and competitiveness is universally acknowledged, with sustainable and integrated networking, grid, data, high performance and commodity computing services seen as essential tools for 40 million users in research and academia in Europe.
The ongoing expansion of user communities is producing new and updated requirements for the common infrastructure. The link between leading research activities and the electronic infrastructure supporting them has been identified as an area where considerable socioeconomic benefits can be realised.
The e-IRG is an inter-governmental policy body comprising national delegates from more than 30 European countries. The work of the e-IRG secretariat is financed by the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme.
The current version of the roadmap, produced in 2009, looks into the new e-Infrastructure landscape that is being formed by new user communities, presents sustainable service provision models and suggests fundamental changes in the underlying technology base.
Rather than considering these changes in isolation from each other, the document tries to analyse their impact from the point of view of the users, service providers and society as a whole.
The document also contains several recommendations aimed at maximising the positive socioeconomic impact of new innovation opportunities that are opening up.
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