Dr
Jon Thorhallsson - CECUA President
CECUA puts
user dimension into practice
CECUA is participating
in the SCOFI Safer Internet Action Plan project. What makes SCOFI so different
is a substantial user involvement from start to finish. CECUA is promoting
user involvement as a promising way to raise user awareness and accelerate
the pick up of the information society. For the industry partners* user
involvement helps guide the technical research and development towards satisfying
real user needs and is also an important step towards commercial exploitation.
It is a win-win for both.
What
is SCOFI?
SCOFI wants to use technology to protect children from harmful Internet
content.
How is it done?
SCOFI uses smart
cards to access the Internet. The smart-card also keeps the child's allowed
content profile, i.e. what the child can view on the Internet and what not.
SCOFI then uses advanced
on-line filtering and image technology to audit the contents arriving on
the computer from the Internet and stop what is harmful.
The SCOFI technology
part comes from partners in Greece, Germany and the Netherlands. CECUA and
national partners in Greece, Germany, Iceland and the UK are responsible
for setting up the user requirements, conducting user testing and finally
user interviewing and reporting. The national partners work with local schools
in their countries giving the project a true European dimension.
For the SCOFI industry
partners this means that they are not developing state of the art technology
for the technology sake and for eventual commercialisation at a later date.
When SCOFI ends in two years they will have a prototype which has received
extensive testing in a real user environment. When they decide if to move
on to commercial exploitation and commercialisation of the prototype they
can base their decision on solid test results. And the time to market will
be much shorter.
CECUA is very pleased
to be involved in SCOFI and hopes it will pave the way for other projects
to include active user involvement and start to finish.
We
welcome any comments from you. Please send them by e-mail.
Dr. Jon Thorhallsson
CECUA President
jon.thorhallsson@cecua.org
*
OMP Germany, NCSR Greece and VicarPTec Netherlands.