NGI Tech Review (CSA)

The COVID-19 crisis demonstrates that complex challenges of today cannot be solved by one organisation or by one country, and they require the support of digital technologies. Open collaboration of innovators from multiple backgrounds supporting values such us protection of privacy, inclusiveness and transparency is a critical factor for the development of successful European solutions.

The scope of this topic is to support an open environment fostering collaboration between internet innovators to tackle key societal challenges such as response to pandemics, climate change, disinformation, or the protection of privacy. The environment will bring together internet innovators to develop, test and improve solutions based on open source technologies.

The funding covers the setting up and operation of the open collaboration environment, including the needed IT infrastructures; community management activities; and support to innovators in a broad range of areas including quality, security, accessibility, privacy, open source licensing, or documentation. The funding does not cover the funding of innovators to develop new solutions.

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.