NGI International Collaboration - USA and Canada (RIA) -

Expected Outcome

Proposal results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:

• Enhanced EU cooperation with the US and Canada in the development of Next Generation Internet technologies, services and standards.
• Supporting the EU internet policy objectives by sharing the EU vision and values with US and Canadian counterparts and forging bonds through concrete collaborations.
• An EU-US-Canada ecosystems of top researchers, hi-tech start-ups / SMEs and Internet-related communities collaborating on the evolution of the Internet according to a human-centric approach.
• Generate new business opportunities for European Internet innovators based on decentralised technologies and open source.

Scope

The aim of the topic is to reinforce EU cooperation and strategic partnerships with the US and Canada in the area of Next Generation Internet, and to establish a continuous dialogue among the actors involved in the US, Canadian and EU programmes, in particular as far as internet standardisation is concerned. The focus should be on trust and data sovereignty, in particular digital identity, and on internet architecture renovation and decentralised technologies.

A RIA will organise open calls for joint projects involving EU teams together with USA and/or Canadian teams on emerging topics for the EU Next Generation Internet and corresponding US and Canadian programmes, including technology development, joint demonstrators and joint contributions to standards. The proposal should support open source software and open hardware design, open access to data, standardisation activities, access to testing and operational infrastructures as well as an IPR regime ensuring lasting impact and reusability of results.

Financial support to third parties

Each RIA will support third party projects, from open source developers, to academic researchers, hi-tech startups, SMEs and other multidisciplinary actors, so that multiple actors are funded and collectively contribute to enhancing EU cooperation with the USA and Canada in the development of Next Generation Internet technologies and services. As the primary purpose of the action is to support and mobilise internet innovators, a minimum of 80% of the total requested EU contribution should be allocated to financial support to third parties, selected through open calls.

The consortium should provide the programme logic for the third-party projects, ensure the coherence and coordination of these projects, and provide the necessary technical support, as well as coaching and mentoring, in order to ensure that the collection of third party projects contributes to a significant advancement and impact in the research and innovation domain and in advancing EU collaboration with the US and Canada. These tasks cannot be implemented using the budget earmarked for the financial support to third parties.

Beneficiaries should make explicit the intervention logic for the area, their capacity to attract top internet talents, to deliver value-added services to the third-party projects, as well as their expertise and capacity in managing the full life-cycle of the open calls transparently and efficiently (a minimum of five open calls during the lifetime of the project). They should explore synergies with other research and innovation actions, supported at national or European level, to increase the overall impact.

The Commission considers that proposals with an overall duration of typically 36 months would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other durations. For ensuring focused effort, third parties will be funded through projects typically in the EUR 50 000 to 100 000 range per project, with indicative duration of 3 to 9 months.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

N.A. (not applicable)

International CooperationArtificial IntelligenceDigital Agenda

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