Microsoft hosts Citizen Services Leadership Forum in Poland, 23-24 April 2009

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corporation, has just completed his one-day trip to Poland. During his visit, he met with representatives of the Polish IT community, partners and key customers of Microsoft, as well as representatives of the Polish government. Ballmer announced a decision made by Microsoft Corporation to grant Poland and the Polish branch of Microsoft the right to host Imagine Cup worldwide finals in 2010. Ballmer and general Andrzej Matejuk, chief of the Polish Police, also signed an agreement pursuant to which the Polish Police joined a number of countries already using Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), a system which helps trace and respond more effectively against crimes targeted at children, including online child pornography.

During a joint press conference, Waldemar Pawlak, deputy prime minister and minister of economy, and Steve Ballmer have announced that Poland would host 2010 worldwide finals of the Imagine Cup technology competition, organized by Microsoft.

“Among the many inspiring meetings and events I participated in during my visit to Poland, it was a particular pleasure to announce that Poland will be hosting the Imagine Cup Finals in 2010. The Imagine Cup has become the world’s leading technology competition for students. This will be a major event, a great way to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in Poland,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corporation.

Imagine Cup is the world’s largest technology competition attracting students from more than 100 countries. The goal of this initiative is also to inspire young people to utilize new technologies to solve some of the important problems we are facing today. There are over 300,000 students from more than 100 countries competing in this year’s edition of the competition. The best of them will measure up against each other during the worldwide finals which will be held in Cairo/Egypt between June 3 and 9.

Another result of the meeting between Steve Ballmer and Waldemar Pawlak is the decision to launch a common educational initiative for small and medium enterprises which will help entrepreneurs better understand the principles of e-commerce. The first step in this program, organized by Microsoft in cooperation with the Confederation of Polish Employers, will be the Microsoft Innovation Forum conference, scheduled for May of this year. This campaign is only one of the many examples of how the government’s 2009-2010 program supporting electronic trade and services, developed by the Ministry of Economy, is being executed in practice.

During his one-day visit in Poland, Steve Ballmer met also with minister Michał Boni, head of the strategic advisors team to the Prime Minister, and Witold Drożdż, undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Interior and Administration. Their meeting was focused on savings in administration which can be obtained through IT technologies, the IT challenges facing Poland in connection to staging huge events, such as Euro 2012, as well as issues of IT national security. Steve Ballmer and general Andrzej Matejuk signed an agreement pursuant to which the Polish Police and law enforcement agencies will be able to use a system developed in cooperation with Microsoft, enabling more rapid response and more effective eradication of child pornography online, as well as other crimes aimed at children.

CETS monitors the Internet in search of child pornography, it collects information on the published content, criminals who publish photos and films, as well as buyers. The collected records and analyses are made available online to law enforcement agencies in the countries cooperating under the project. This allows police forces in many countries to more rapidly and effectively identify people who distribute illegal content online. The system is made available by Microsoft free of charge. CETS can accelerate investigations by up to 80 percent. Poland is a second country from the CEE region, after Romania, to join this system.

During his visit in Poland, Steve Ballmer also met with participants of the Citizen Services Leaders Forum, a conference gathering government and self-government elites from the Central and Eastern European countries, where he delivered a speech closing the first day of the conference.

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