T.R. Ministry of Development organized the ICT PSP award-ceremony on the 22nd August, 2011 in Ankara and invited the representatives of 15 institutions whose projects became successful in ICT Policy Support Programme (PSP) Call 5. The ministry employees and the press members also participated in the ceremony. The Minister, Cevdet Yilmaz, presented the awards to the successful institutions and answered the questions of the participants and the press.
Since the year 2009, Turkey has been one of the participant countries in ICT PSP, which is one of the three specific programmes of The Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) and runs for the years 2007-2013. The ICT PSP aims at stimulating innovation and competitiveness through the wider uptake and best use of ICT by citizens, governments and businesses. It provides EU funding to support the realisation of the Digital agenda for Europe. The programme is open to all legal entities established in the EU Member States and associated countries such as Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway, Croatia, Turkeyand Serbia to the ICT Policy Support programme.
In the ceremony, the Ministry, Cevdet Yılmaz, explained that Turkey showed a big success on the participation to the CIP ICT PSP in 2011. The rate of return which was 88% last year increased by 163%. It means that Turkey made a payment of 1.640.160 Euro from the national budget for the CIP ICT PSP 2011 Call and within this call, 15 institutions from Turkey who take place in 10 different projects deserved to receive the grant from the European Commission. The total amount of the grant which will be taken by the Turkish institutions is 2.674.000 Euro. This shows the success of Turkey in the area of business development and projects implementation with the partners in EU Member States in ICT sector.
In this respect, T.R. Ministry of Development organized the CIP ICT PSP award-ceremony on the 22nd August, 2011 in Vilayetler Evi, Ankara and invited the representatives of 15 institutions whose projects became successful in ICT Policy Support Programme (PSP) Call 5. TAGES is one of these successful institutions with its participation in CitySDK project (Smart City Service Development Kit and its application pilots) and Leyla Arsan, CEO of TAGES, and Aslihan Kagnici (Assistant Consultant at TAGES) received the award which was presented by the Minister, Cevdet Yılmaz. Within the CitySDK project, It will be produced a wide array of pan-European smart city service pilots in the partner cities. The pilots are in the domains of smart mobility, smart participation and smart tourism. The pilots involve a large number of citizens using the pilots in their daily lives. A combination of city- and demand-driven piloting and a large amount of partners‘ relevant existing services, interfaces, software, practices and standards are the key enablers for this broad approach. The CitySDK enhances the between-city transfer and innovation and development capability of the Smart City Applications. The CitySDK creates an open innovation ecosystem where the cities‘ infrastructure acts as an enabling innovation platform. There are 22 partners in the project and the partner cities are Istanbul, Barcelona, Helsinki, Lamia, Manchester, Lisbon,Amsterdam and Roma. Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) is also one of the partners in the project and TAGES will collaborate with IMM within the pilot activities in Istanbul.
The other institutions who are awarded are T.R. Ministry of Health, National Library of Turkey, Ankara Provincial Directorate of National Education, East Marmara Development Agency, TUBİTAK-BİLGEM, TUBİTAK-ULAKBİM, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Nigde Municipality, Ordu Municipality, TURKSAT, SRDC Ltd. Sti., SAMPAS, Istanbul Sport A.S. and The Turkish Association Against Rheumatism.
