Foreword Helmut Paugger: eEurope. eSchwechat.at. We are online.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We live in eEurope. We live in an European Information Society.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays a greater role each day in forming our lives. To help us to make the greatest use of this, the European Union Commission has started two initiatives "eEurope 2005: An Information Society for All" and "i2010: European Information Society 2010".

The aim of these initiatives is to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to take part in the Information Society. Broadband technologies, secure services and applications should be promoted and an environment created that allows for the creation of new jobs and benefits private investment. 

A well thought through Information Society opens up an enormous potential for improving quality of life while increasing productivity. And out of this grow great social and economic possibilities.

Alongside the exchange of data via broadband technology, the priorities of eEurope are above its applications in eBusiness, eGovernment, eHealthcare, eHomecare, eLearning and eSecurity. An important theme in this is raising the expenditure for research and development.

We live in eEurope. And also in eSchwechat.at, a community worth liking and living in. It looks to the example of EU politics, the European Information Society, to implement an equivalent idea in Schwechat. And so that the goals that the EU Commission have set out can be reached, every effort needs to be made on all levels of our society. Alongside national projects like eAustria, important contributions can now also be made on a local level. This is exactly what the five year eSchwechat.at programme is setting out to do.

eSchwechat.at is concerned with the creation of an Information Society in Schwechat in which ICT can be integrated as an aid to all areas of life where it is possible and worthwhile. Important themes in this are high quality further education and training, work and economy, leisure, public administration, and health/care institutions – to name but a few.

An additional aim is the construction of an internationally recognised High-Tech Location Schwechat in the field of ICT, with a specific technological focus on eHealthcare / eHomecare. New businesses, new jobs and new technologies will be created here, technologies, for example that will make life easier for the elderly, the frail and those with disabilities, facilitating their proper integration.

eSchwechat can take us a long way forward. It’s all about new opportunities to increase worth. It’s about the future of the people in our town, Schwechat. It’s up to us to grow along with it.
 
Yours,

Helmut Paugger
Programme Manager eSchwechat.at
Managing Director Innovation Consultancy GmbH