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The ICONS project is completed!
Looking backward to January 2002 (or even a year earlier, when the project proposal had been prepared) we can see the way we went through. We see that the efforts amounting to 400 person months of total value exceeding 3 mln Euro were well invested and brought excellent results.
The research achievements were not only validated and published on numerous conferences and workshops (78), in journals (12) and books (4), documented in the project deliverables (41 formal project reports, out of which 16 publicly available) but also elaborated up to the detailed design level and implemented within the ICONS knowledge intensive application platform. 19 modules were implemented from scratch or as an extension of the existing open source modules and contributed by partners. The modules cooperating with each other within the precisely engineered ICONS platform architecture provide a comprehensive set of generic services indispensable for development of any type of KM intensive application. The platform validated against the prototype of Structural Funds Project Knowledge Portal proved its viability. The first commercial application of individual modules (e.g. intelligent workflow engine, ontology manager, text categorization, content repository) were also successful (BIP, SUNPLAST and PIUM applications). The most impressive ICONS platform based application is this of European Exchange of Documents – Poland [Momotko2004]. This large system (20 ministries, 12 000 civil servants, 10 000 incoming documents a months, budget 500 000 EUR) implementation and deployment in such a strict time regime (the first increment December 2003 – March 2004) was possible only due to the fact that it did not start from the scratch but rather built upon services provided by the ICONS platform. The consortium has no doubt that the ICONS platform supported by the ICONS methodology will compete with the leaders in knowledge, content and workflow management systems in Europe and in the US.
The major concern is related to further industrialization of the Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal (SFP KP; the second major result of the ICONS project). The user-oriented assessment [ICONS D37] and other dissemination activities confirmed that the system is potentially of great importance for social and economic development of Poland and other accessing countries. Although many notable institutions expressed their interest and willingness to exploit the portal (acknowledged by 12 gathered letters of interest), we were not able to find any real investors. The most promising talks are still carried out with NOT (Polish Federation of Engineering Associations – NOT, http://not.org.pl/english/)and will be continued even after the project completion. The consortium is motivated as it can envisage the forthcoming benefits for national economics and the consortium itself.
Despite of the above described tangible results, all partners increased their competencies due to cross-fertilization. Altogether about 60 persons were involved in the project, out of which 11 commenced, carried out or completed PhD studies. The cooperation among partners is established and will be maintained. The project results are amply presented in the project description [ICONS D01b, second edition] (ICONS project results). Since the original project description served as the project baseline during the entire ICONS project life cycle, presentation of the project results organized in a similar fashion provides a “closing bracket” of the project work specification. In the Technology Implementation Plan [ICONS D34] we put more stress on further exploitation and business aspects. [ICONS D33] (Final Report) summarizes the project from the managerial point of view and present lessons learned.
This Management Report covers the last period (4 months of extension) of the ICONS project.
This Management Report should be treated as a draft version because the effort and cost data are not included yet. The information on progress is valid, however.