Electronic Proposal Submission Service: back online
Following a short break for relocation purposes, the Electronic Proposal Submission Service (EPSS) will be back online on CORDIS on 20 December. The service is used by those wishing to submit a proposal to the European Commission for funding under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). EPSS began providing the online service for proposers on 19 March 2007. By 30 November the service successfully managed the closure of 56 Calls. Between March and November, 34,720 users registered, and in total 26,607 proposals were submitted through the online web application without any data loss. The service was not available from 30 November until now due to its relocation and installation in the Commission's Covent Garden (Brussels) evaluation facility. A resumption of service was originally planned to take place before 14 January 2008. Completion of work ahead of schedule means that the service is available as of 20 December at 8am. From this date, calls that the EPSS could be used for before the shutdown will be re-activated on CORDIS for submission. These include FP7-ICT-2007-C, FP7-INCO-2007-3 and FP7-COH-2007-2.2-OMC-NET. For the 35 calls published in November the service will be available as soon as the necessary validations are finished. 'After a busy year this is a real successful closure for 2007. 2008 will be even more challenging, but not only in terms of the expected high number of proposals: our plan is to implement a new functionality of participant identification in EPSS - our aim is to reduce the administrative burden during proposal submission,' says Attila Berczik, the EPSS service manager from the Commission's DG Research.