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This Management Report covers the forth semester (out of 4 semesters + 4 months of extension) of the ICONS project. During this period, the consortium carried out significant work pertaining mainly to the ICONS platform development as well as to the development and deployment of a pilot application of the Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal (SFP KP) [ICONS D35]. Generally the progress is adequate to amount of resources spent and appropriate with respect to the initial project plan amended with the 4 month extension.
The ICONS project entered its final period. Indeed, the progress achieved to the end of 2003 year reflects the project completion process. All the research is completed and most of platform development (excluding continuous maintenance) is done. Additionally, the first increment of SFP KP is accomplished providing an early proof of concept for the underlying ICONS platform. The SFP KP demonstrator is advanced to the stage in which its industrialisation can be discussed with potential external partners.
The ICONS platform development (WP6) is completed within the defined scope. Technical design (programmer’s and administrator’s guides as well detailed design) of modules developed and enhanced is presented in reports [ICONS D13] and [ICONS 21]. Various aspects of the platform quality were examined and accepted in the process of rigorous testing [ICONS D23]. Therefore, the milestone 5 (Acceptance of the ICONS prototype) is reached. Although this platform development increment is considered to be completed, we keep up to date the list of possible improvement and will consequently address it during the maintenance process and future developments.
[ICONS D13] together with the revised versions of [ICONS D11] and [ICONS D12] complete the Graphic User Interface workpackage (WP3).
We have completed also the [ICONS D20]. It addresses aspects of information system integration and distributed workflow process integration that fulfils commitments of the Distributed Content Repository workpackage (WP5).
The first increment of the Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal was completed before the November’s review. After overcoming initial problems (the value of identification of these problems during the demonstration application development can not be overestimated) the work was carried out smoothly. Further SFP KP enhancements will be limited to accommodation of the November’s review recommendations (usability and more stress on content management), preparation to user oriented assessment (localisation to Polish, more pertinent data) and accommodation of the user assessment major discoveries as well as making the application appealing for potential investors of industrialized version (their identification is a subject to exploitation and dissemination activities - carried out intensively, to be continued in 2004). Additionally, a sound business model for further industrialization of the platform and SFP KP must be elaborated and put into operation to commercialize over investments done.
Dissemination and exploitation except normal publication activities brought the first commercial benefits! First of all, we applied the ICONS enhanced workflow engine in e-government (BIP) and industrial portals (SANPLAST). Secondly, innovative ICONS knowledge management solutions turned to be appreciated in the bid for European Exchange of Documents – Poland (EWD-P) system for Polish Ministry of Scientific Research and Information Technology. These examples of early successful exploitation of ICONS results make the consortium even more determined in further industrialisation and commercialisation of the achieved results. Note that this report partially covers [ICONS D27] presented to the reviewers on the November 2003 review. The redundancy was introduced for the completeness purposes (managerial reports present detailed progress information in the consecutive semesters while progress reports deliver information on intermediate results).