At the NGIForum 2018, Mr. Alexandru Stan from In-Two, Germany provided the viewpoint of SMEs in relation to their participation to the Next Generation Internet initiative (NGI): Are SMEs important for NGI? Can SMEs create the impact in trustworthiness of content alone?
Speaking on the first question, the importance of the role of SMEs in the NGI initiative was especially highlighted since they have a critical role to play in the value chain of innovation, in which they are constantly experimenting, and rapidly bringing new innovative things to the market. They are well positioned and have a guided view on how to design solutions that are “People centric” and “human centric”, as to succeed as an SME, it is necessary to come up with real solutions that make sense to solving real world problems.
In response to the second question, it was felt that SMEs do not play well alone. Researchers need the collaboration with SMEs in order to make their innovation an industrial success. Industry can push the innovation process behind research organizations. Mr. Stan highlighted the Marconi project for an example of excellent collaboration between research and industry, in particular SMEs, within the combined fields of radio & media. IN2 is an SME working on developing content-rich applications with trustworthiness and quality of content, and collaboration with research institutes for them provided stimulating results, according to Mr. Stan.
Human Values, Challenges, Solutions, Initiatives, Gaps and R&I needs related to Search and Discovery (SME perspective) are presented below.
| The following Human Values were identified in relation to this topic |
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- V1. Openness;
- V2. Access;
- V3. Inclusiveness;
- V4. Trustworthiness.
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| The following Challenges were identified in relation to these Human values |
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- C1. The trend of moving towards echo chambers and walled gardens, and how this differs from the ideas of an open internet [V1, V2, V3, V4];
- C2. Content without the proper context or content with the wrong context [V4];
- C3. The need to raise the profile and reputation of SMEs producing solutions in the larger setting against the large players, who have a dominant role [V3];
- C4. Coming up with a peer review or reputation strategy to make it clear to customers that what SMEs are doing is trustworthy [V3, V4]
- C5. Trustworthiness for the entire value chain in large scale systems – how to ensure all steps along the way are verifiable in real time (some examples from smart Agriculture, smart pharma were highlighted where if one sensor was giving incorrect readings, the whole system is compromised) [V4].
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| The participants identified a number of Potential Solutions to address the challenges |
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- S1. Less is More (e.g. “A-Social networks”);
- S2. Conversation vs. “Engagement”;
- S3. Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (IndieWeb);
- S4. Trade off: Convenience / Privacy;
- S5. Selective serendipity (i.e. giving the algorithms an opportunity to step out of the models);
- S6. Developing transparency into peer to peer reputation systems, making them more trustworthy – connect with experimental platforms such as smart cities initiatives, Fed4Fire, and other experimental facilities would enable raising of profile and reputation of results coming from the NGI programme [C4].
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| A number of known initiatives / projects were identified addressing the solutions |
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- I1. Caprice community
- I2. European Trusted Cloud Platform of EIT Digital; e.g. My Data Store of Telecom Italia. Also see Trusted Cloud Platform with FSecure, experimenting with an offer of Security as a Service (now available commercially HERE). In-Two have integrated this in one of their solutions so that our customers could have secure and trustworthy content hubs, building search and discovery on top of the trusted content only. [C5]
- I3. Pharma industry are working on some elements of the E2E verification process but needs more R&I [C5, S6];
- I4. FIWARE context broker, which is a central component of the FIWARE platform, would it address the challenge related to mapping the content and context in relation to the content. [C2]
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| Identified Gaps |
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- G1. How to make sure the context for the content is correct and evolving? [C2, I4]
- G2. Lifespan of the content and whether it is evolving according to the correct contex? Some challenges to address are a) Gaining reputation from today’s models could take too long; b) Need to develop new ways to quicken the process e.g. having reputable review trusted authorities and/ or certification processes. [C2]
- G3. Need to look at the end to end harvesting of data to ensure there is no corruption of data anywhere. [C5, S6]
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| R&I Needs to fill the gaps |
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- R1. Detailing correctness and authenticity of entire value chain verification mechanisms (some work started in smart pharma and smart agri, but much more is needed for NGI); [G3]
- R2. Could blockchain technologies be used to address these gaps in such a low power based system: is it feasible, either technically or economically? [G1 – G3]
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