Next Generation Internet Commons Policy (CSA) -

Expected Outcome

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• A stronger integration of the Next generation Internet initiative, its vision and ecosystem, with the digital commons policies at national and European level
• A long-term strategy for internet commons which are critical for sovereignty and trust, based on a clear mapping of existing communities of commoners and commons
• A smooth articulation of bottom-up activities of European communities of commoners and top-down policy priorities e.g. for reaching critical mass, for the reuse of commons, and for avoiding overlaps
• A more coherent funding landscape integrating national and European dimensions from public and private sector

Scope

While internet commons are critical in our digital life their importance it is not fully reflected at the strategic level with little representation of the communities involved, lack of structure, gap between grass-root commoners and top-down sovereignty policies, fragmented funding landscape.

The scope of this support encompasses the following activities; proposals should:

• Identify active communities of commoners in Europe and monitoring of their evolution and maturity levels
• Measure the leverage effect (e.g. in funding and resources) resulting from NGI funding
• Define a strategic agenda valid for the Multi-Annual Financial Framework timeframe and planning expected maturation of the various commons incubated in NGI
• Carry out consultation to identify internet commons priorities for ensuring European sovereignty
• Develop a plan to support commoners based on their needs that would include support to navigate the funding landscape and devise a path towards a European one-stop shop
• Create and animate a group of experts in internet commons that will analyse the NGI portfolio and devise opinion on its evolution every two months. The group should be representative of European geographies, internet building blocks, commoners diversity and include representatives of NGI on-going actions
• Devise mechanisms for creating complementary and synergies with like-minded efforts at global, European and national levels including with European technology industries
• Elaborate governance models for future commons integrating European strategic autonomy policies as well as maintenance strategy
• In conjunction with NGI outreach office, organise strategic events involving key decision makers from national and European levels where the various outputs of the action are exposed and next steps discussed

Proposals should also demonstrate strong knowledge of the open source and internet commons context (e.g. funding mechanisms, methods of working, communities involved, commons life-cycle) and be familiar with the technology building blocks that make the internet.

The Commission considers that proposals with an overall duration of 36 months would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other durations.

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

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