Disseminate Information

this is just for linking our subject with education (everyone has the right to receive a free
education - free education must be based on free/open source software, tools etc - open source
software means making available code/help/support information for anyone. On the other hand,
if information about projects/OSes etc is fully available people are encouraged to learn of it, use-
report-develop etc).

Before assessing the various approaches used to disseminate information, it is worth revisiting
the reasons for disseminating information in a given community. In this way, the overall vision
and purpose can be validated and criteria established to measure success at various stages of
implementation, or improvement of, services and systems used to support dissemination
 A) General reasons for dissemination
There are usually good reasons why organisations decide to disseminate
information. These reasons are not necessarily independent of one
another but can nonetheless be categorised to emphasise the motivation
of an organisation when initiating dissemination The reasons are usually
to increase the value of one or more of the following attributes of the
enterprise shareholders.
 a)Judgement
 Information is often disseminated in the hope that individuals and entities in an
organisation will improve their knowledge base and subsequently make better judgements
in future situations. For example, a researcher is faced with carrying out one of two types
of experiment but knows that many of the first type have already been shown (with a
strong significance factor) to be more expensive than the second. Provided all other things
are equal (success rate, easy of use, state of mind etc.) the researcher should be more
inclined to choose the second type of experiment and save his company or community
additional expense and time.
 b)Awareness
 Information is often disseminated in order to educate, explain or promote a concept,
process or principle. For example, technical specifications explaining system capabilities,
instructions about alternatives to avoid congested transport routes and guidelines for the
completion of work in order to ensure consistent appearance of project deliverables are all
ways in which information is disseminated to generally encourage recipients to comply
with a procedure in the belief of organisational (or enterprise) improvements.
 c)Response
 Sometimes information is disseminated solely in the hope it will cause some feedback that
might require further information to be generated or be used to validate something.
Examples include advertising, questionnaires, market surveys, frequently asked question
lists, testimonials etc.
 d)Collaboration
 Information is often disseminated in order for a group of individuals to share knowledge
and routes of communication. Examples include workflow systems to support the flow of
information between system entities in order to achieve a common purpose, mailing lists
where like-minded individuals can listen to and discuss common issues, libraries where
people can access information, and control systems where probes might detect and transmit
warnings about certain events.
 B) Reasons for dissemination in the TAP
The following are considered to be the main objectives of disseminating information in the
TAP.
 a)Promote results
 TAP has to ensure a wide dissemination of its projects' results of activities.
 b)Optimise exploitation
 TAP has to ensure that entrepreneurs have an opportunity to exploit project results by
converting results into innovations.
 c)Promote technology transfer
 TAP has to ensure that applicable technology can be transferred to a wide audience. For
example, all the small to medium sized enterprises in Europe.
 d)Improve links with national initiatives
 TAP is a European activity and as such provides a federated service for national counterparts. This can
help improve links between European and national activities.

 e)Ensure continuing development of expertise

 By continuing to disseminate information, TAP acts as a catalyst to promote further growth in expertise
among the European RTD community.
 f)Support continuing supply of new information
 As the results of different projects are continually coming through the TAP, new information is arriving
that can be used as guidance on best practice. It also offers a source of news about commercial
innovations and partnerships between European companies.
 C) Observations
 The motives for dissemination identified in 2.1 and the requirements in 2.2 identified some
reasons and methods used to carry out dissemination. Looking at a range of dissemination
activities in this way has led to consideration of why dissemination is important. It has also
indicated, implicitly, the consequences of not carrying it out effectively.