June 28 and 29 the ICIS Mid-Term Review took place. The goal was to assess various aspects of the ICIS project as a whole by an external committee. The committee's findings and recommendations have been forwarded to the Comissie van Wijzen, who in turn advises the Dutch government on the status, progress and funding of the BSIK projects. The ICIS project’s Mid-Term Review (MTR) committee was composed by members being individually invited by D-CIS:

• Prof. Dr. Tim Grant Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA), The Netherlands, & University of Pretoria, South Africa
• Prof. Dr. Thomas C. Henderson, University of Utah, USA
• Mr. Robert Rinnooy Kan, innooy Kan & Partners, The Netherlands
• Prof. Dr. Raija Koivisto VTT, Finland
• Mr. Eldert van Schagen, VIPS b.v., The Netherlands

Two other members (Mr. Dick Schoof, The Netherlands, and Dr. John Howard, UK) were invited to participate in the committee, but were unable to be present. Prof. Grant chaired the committee. The committe was assisted by the following members of the ICIS project:

• Dr. Kees Nieuwenhuis, D-CIS project director
• Dr. Hans Keus, TNO project manager and TNO representative
• Ir. Dik Fikkert, 4TEC b.v., valorisation manager
• Eddy van der Heijden, D-CIS project coordination office

The ICIS external mid-term evaluation committee was charged with the review and evaluation of the ICIS project in the following obligatory topics:

• The scientific and other quality of the project.
• The substantive coherence.
• The current relevance and predictive value of the chosen milestones.
• The relationship between progress and the project’s mission/final objectives.
• Implementation of changes recommended following earlier monitoring rounds.
• Vision and strategy for the future of project after the grant period ends (in terms of the embedding of knowledge, organization and finance)

Summary of results and recommendations

1. The Scientific Quality of the project received an excellent rating (5). To make this more visible the MTR committee recommended that ICIS places a list of all publication on the public website and that this list is made to be complete. This resulted in the D-CIS publication database, that is also the source of the lists of publications included in this website. To maintain the quality level it was also recommended that ICIS encourages an increase of publications in accredited scientific journals. Furthermore ICIS started to work on a Scientific Book on the ICIS project
2. The substantive coherence of the project received a rating of 2-3. The MTR committee recommended that the Integration and Demonstration Cluster be given a mandate to take the actions necessary to realize more coherence. It was further suggested to manage the culture of the project to establish stronger partnerships. ICIS addressed this issues by a number of concrete actions, including organising events that stimulate cooperation and knowledge exchange, writing a so-called Glossy Booklet for a broad audience that explains ICIS and the interrelations between subprojects by means of scenarios, initiating special-interest groups on various application domains and initiating the development of integrated technology demonstrators.
3. On the topic of milestones and progress the ICIS project received good rating (3). The Committee recommended the project to use project metrics (milestones, Key Performance Indicators) as an instrument to better track the output of the project. Furthermore the committe stressed the importance of maintaining a consistent publication record and to deliver all formal reports in time. The ICIS project management took adequate measures to meet the committee's recommendations.
4. The progress of ICIS working towards the project's mission was rated "very good" (4). The mission of ICIS is to become the Dutch knowledge platform for research and application of advanced technology for interactive collaborative information systems for decision making in complex dynamic environments. The contours of the previously uncharted territory of the Dutch knowledge platform are becoming visible. Each cluster is executing research in this area, delivering an impressive range of newsletters, studies, papers, articles, presentations, proof of concepts, etc. Still there is room for improvement. The MTR committee recommends that the ICIS project management team should ensure that all deliverables are made available on the internal project Sharepoint environment, turn the ICIS public website into the main portal for all participants and a repository for after-project use, arrange a workshop in which all clusters work together to develop an integrated architecture for the Dutch knowledge platform, develop a plan for growing the Dutch knowledge platform into a LivingLab. The later resulted in an explorative action on living labs and eventually in the ICIS City Lab event. The remaining recommendations are covered by a series of internal events, improving the project's website and reviving the usage of the internal project infrastructure.
5. The implementation of changes recommended earlier to the ICIS project was rated well (5). Earlier recommendations were addressed by two actions. First, an Open Call for project proposalsl was made which resulted in 23 submissions (10 from new industrial concerns and 10 from new academic institutions). From these, 7 new partners were selected: 3 academic and 4 industrial. The unallocated part of the budget was allocated to these new partners. Second, an Integration and Demonstration cluster was created and chartered to facilitate industry partner projects; this is to be achieved by an exchange of assets between research clusters and industry partner projects as well as the valorization of research with industry partner projects.
6. The MTR committee rated the vision and strategy for the future after the current grant period ends as "good" (3). The recommendation was given to create and use an attractive public website for this purpose. ICIS improved the official project website (this one) and launched a more popular site for broad Dutch audience: www.icis.nu