ETAG – European Technology Assessment Group

Abstract:
Deliverable No. 1 of the STOA Project "Potential and Impacts of Cloud Computing Services and Social Network Sites"
This document is the result of the consultation phase of the STOA-project “Potential and Impacts of Cloud Computing Services and Social Network Sites”. It addresses in the first place cloud computing and furthermore social network sites. While Cloud computing (CC) has broad implications for all areas of society and business applications are perhaps crucial for its sustained breakthrough, social network sites (SNS) have their main impact on relationships between private citizens or private citizens and businesses. Beside the impact on the IT industry itself, the development of both is also seen as pivotal for the overall competitiveness of the European economy and society. However, both also pose a number of challenges for enterprises as well as for private citizens. There could be increasing virtualisation of the processing of personal and other sensitive data that is transmitted and stored by commercial providers on servers situated in a location unknown to the costumer. Given these challenges, it is not clear whether both and in particular cloud computing will meet its potential and the high expectations connected to it. Therefore the goal of the project is to analyse this blurry situation and to assess potentials as well as positive and negative impacts for citizens, business and public authorities from a European perspective.

This interim report summarises the results of the first project phase, which lasted from April 15th to June 15th 2012. The main objective of this first project phase was the development of a detailed plan for the next four phases of the project. A preparatory meeting, held in May 2012, and several telephone conferences during the consultation phase with the project partners were very instrumental in discussing and prioritising research themes and issues.

The report itself consists of two parts. The main part presents an introductory overview of the debates on Cloud Computing Services and Social Network Sites and their potentials and impacts for the European society as a whole. Against this background, the main research perspectives of the project are discussed in detail. Finally, the project’s research questions are presented. The annex describes the project plan, gives an overview of the project schedule and the deliverables.

An important element of the whole project is the involvement of those MEPs who are particularly interested in the issue of Cloud Computing and Social Network Sites. We are convinced that taking the perspective of these representatives into account will help to generate recommendations that are considered useful by European decision-makers and practitioners.