Deadline: 2-Sep-21
European Commission is calling for proposals for Framework Partnership Agreement for Research and Education Networks.
Scope
The scope of the partnership activities should be to deliver an action plan on basis of jointly agreed objectives, covering the next 7 years of work. The action plan should cover the following areas of activity:
- High quality connectivity and collaboration services for excellence in Research and Education
- Provide operational excellence by delivering and developing high quality, secure, trusted, interoperable and cost-effective services, connectivity and collaboration services for both Research and Education sectors and align service offering for supporting the policy agenda of ERA, EEA and EHEA: to enable borderless collaboration, and attract talent from anywhere in the world to cooperate and exchange data with their peers.
- Provide core services on security and identity federation, in coordination with other e-infrastructure and heterogeneous identity providers to enable service interoperability and a trusted and seamless user experience. National and European regulation in electronic identity (e.g., such e-IDAS) should be considered in particular for the development of Trust & Identity service in order to maximise societal impact beyond the research and scientific community.
- Innovation of the service portfolio, including possible activities at lower TRL levels, in order to support researchers working on new network and added-value services such as super high transfer speeds, quantum network testing, etc.
- Stimulating the development of consortium partners’ human capital (including training, secondment and exchange schemes) will be an important pillar in fostering service innovation and assuring expertise in all Member States and Associated Countries.
- State-of-the-art connectivity for the wider European Digital Infrastructure
- Push the boundaries of the state-of-the-art of the communication commons by constant development of both innovative multi-domain services and their use, and by translating this innovation into a competitive European ICT sector. This can include interconnection with key European data spaces and data repositories, including the Common European data spaces and with a wide spectrum of actors, e.g. industry and SMEs in collaboration with commercial operators.
- Adapt to the changing environment by the continuous development of the service portfolio of the European communications commons while maintaining the high level of accountability, security, measurability, transparency and sustainability. Actions should align with and contribute to the regulatory, standardisation and policy framework in order to enable full exploitation of the communications commons.
- Progressive upgrade from a Gigabit to a Terabit network as a critical part of the main public digital infrastructures in the EU.
- International connectivity and collaboration
- Services and network architecture shall enable European driven researchers and scientists unconstrained access to data and resources worldwide while attracting data and talent. Activities in the international realm shall clearly foster international cooperation among researchers, contribute to the objectives of other relevant EU programmes and policies, and leverage the existing resources to maximise impact. Capacity building activities will be a crosscutting element in international cooperation.
Funding Information
The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Outcomes
Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:
- very high-bandwidth, end-to-end connectivity among research and education users all over Europe, and cross-border collaboration services that are reliable and secure, enabling Europe to overcome the remaining Digital Divide and to be at the forefront of global Research and Education, attracting data and talent;
- secure access to computing facilities and data repositories for European and International research infrastructures (RIs) and paving the way for widespread access to common European Data Spaces;
- an integrated portfolio of services for connectivity, collaboration, security, trust and identity;
- collaboration with international partners, to foster global RI connectivity in line with Europe’s international cooperation policy objectives.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
- eligible non-EU countries:
- countries associated to Horizon Europe
- low- and middle-income countries
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/3AV5AcS
