The strong interrelation between the two components of INNO-UTILITIES is based on the fact that innovative systems like the one that is being implemented by the technical component are outsourced to contractors selected through public procurement procedures that are studied through the non-technical component.
Telecommunication utilities were the first to be deregulated - privatised and are currently the most innovative compared to other utilities. The non-technical component includes:
Suggestions for adaptations of to the overall public procurement procedures.
Studies of the procurement framework and procedures that are used by telecom operators in order to carry out innovative projects.
Development of recommendations on how the rest of the utilities can make their procurement procedures more innovation-friendly, benefiting from the experience gained with telecom utilities.
Public sector purchases represent about 11% of the European Union's GDP, equivalent to half of Germany's GDP. The public sector can probably give the biggest boost to innovation in the EU, if the public procurement procedures become more "innovation friendly". The non-technical component of INNO-UTILITIES has as its central objective to develop "public technology procurement" as an innovation policy instrument.
Telecommunication utilities are the first to face large-scale fraud and malign attacks. To give an example, we refer to a sophisticated DoS (Denial of Service) attack that affected several European networks recently, when the SS7 signaling telephone network was overloaded with artificially generated SMS messages (short messages related to mobile phones). As a result the entire telephone infrastructure was completely out of service for a day. FIINA (Forum for International Irregular Network Access) estimates a total figure of around 56 billion Euro of losses worldwide due to telecom fraud and security-related problems. The technical component aims to implement an innovative secure high-performance automated system that will contain structured information and will permit the secure exchange of information related to telecommunications fraud and security threats. The system will be initially used by the shareholders of Eurescom, major European telecom operators and members of ETNO the European Telecommunication Network Operators Association.