Confederation of European Computer User Associations

Confédération Européenne des Associations d'Utilisateurs des Technologies de I'Information
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NEWS FLASH

CECUA puts user dimension into practice

 

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.