§ Mr. KeyTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what financial assistance is available towards collaborative research projects involving business and universities in the field of digital archiving technologies; which projects she(a)has assisted since 2001 and (b) is supporting; and whether her policy is available on a website. [164450]
§ Jacqui SmithFinancial assistance for collaborative research to support such technologies will be available under DTIs Technology programme to be formally announced on 26 April 2004. Assistance up to 75 per cent. for basic, 50 per cent. for applied and 25 per cent. for nearer market research projects will be available for industry to academic collaborations and 50 per cent. 40 per cent. and 25 per cent. respectively for projects involving business to business collaborations. The support will be available for projects that address research into such aspects of digital archiving as: Meta-data, Semantics, Ontologies, Vocabularies and 1599W Lexicons. The Innovation Report, which introduces DTI Technology Programme is available from DTIs website www.dti.gov.uk/technologyprogramme. The details for applying to the Technology Programme and a description of the technology priorities covered will be placed on DTI website in early April.
Since 2001, the Department has provided £1.1 million within the e-Science Core programme to establish the Digital Curation Centre at the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow. Bath and the Central Laboratories of the Research Councils. Details are available through www.nesc.ac.uk, and www.e-science.clrc.ac.uk/web/ projects/Data_Curation_Centre.
A further £3 million of assistance has been provided to support nine projects in the information storage and display area within the LINK Information Storage and Displays programme.