SGA to the FPA for Research and Education Networks (2024)

The consortium of the selected Framework Partnership Agreement[[(GN5-FPA n.101055563)]] for Research and Education Networks, is invited to submit one proposal for a Specific Grant Agreements (SGA) for the second period of the partnership (2023-2024). Activities to be carried out under the SGAs should be in line with the objectives defined in the Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) action plan. The proposals will be assessed according to the evaluation criteria described in the specific conditions of the action and the requirements listed in the invitation letter from the Commission.

Expected Outcomes:

The concrete expected outcomes per area of activities should be:

Increase core network capacity and coverage:

• Progress towards delivering low latency Terabit capacity, meeting the huge growth in secure network capacity demands and challenges for a paradigm shift in the digital science and computational infrastructures planned over the next 10 years;
• Further develop the fibre optic based network infrastructure to the edges of Europe, where technically and economically feasible, including very high-speed terabit capable services to serve the intensive, point-to-point data flows. That should cover transfer of large volumes of data which are routinely required by international scientific endeavours.

Improve and expand connectivity and collaboration service catalogue offering:

• Improve the offering on above-the-net-services, including the use of the underlying connectivity infrastructure and its core building blocks, security and authentication and authorisation Infrastructure (AAI);
• Advance by designing and implementing new demand-driven, reliable, secure and multi-domain services for GEANT's R&E community;
• Further develop and expand GÉANT’s Trust & Identity services, eduRoam and eduGAIN as the foundation for access to academic resources worldwide and address the next challenges in online education, such as data handling and educational connectivity beyond institutions;
• Evolve the federation using open platforms to implement proofs-of-concept for advanced research initiatives, technologies, and services (like distributed acoustic sensing service for submarine cables, or others).

Leverage Trust and Identity Services:

• Extend the interoperability to public and private digital identity platforms, including support for the eIDAS national identity platform (enhanced service offering with advanced group access rights management);
• Contribute to national, European and global standardisation and regulation of trust and identity services to maximise the impact of privacy-by-design, and sustainable solutions that are developed in the R&E community;
• Collaborate with emerging Trust & Identity Services and standards in the public sector to build interoperable services and a pan-European privacy preserving trust fabric;
• Build upon comprehensive and interoperable frameworks and services to facilitate data-centric collaboration and data sharing based on findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data principles.

Take GEANT's network and partners security to the next level:

• Analyse best practices and put in place the necessary tools (either via tailored off-the-shelf or in-house developed products) to secure GEANT's high speed networks across different NRENs;
• Install the necessary framework and processes for fast, federated and coordinated responses to computer security incidents across European's NRENs and GÉANT infrastructures and communities, extend this by cooperation with the worldwide community of Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) and develop effective and innovative responses to threat management, wherever feasible;
• Assist partner organisations to improve their security posture and address threats in a timely matter and collaborate by providing adequate knowledge, awareness, experience and expertise with an extensive training program, both for basic and expert levels, and provide a security dashboard for NRENs to show actual compliance with standards;
• Ensure security-by-design across activities, and investment on keeping pace with methodological developments in the industrial and commercial sector, as well as with new challenges;
• Ensure GEANT's network is secure for processing of sensitive data and GDPR compliant data.

Develop collaboration in new fronts:

• Analyse architectural and operational models for global connectivity and data orchestration that enable international and cross-disciplinary research to exploit world-class computing facilities (like the ones by EuroHPC and consortium partners’ national initiatives);
• Align to project-wide best practices for software service releases, based on industry standards for quality, maintenance, and deployment, along with defining interface specifications for all delivered services;
• Provide the necessary for safe, secure, and cost-effective provision of services through pan-European procurement frameworks (where externally sourced), including an up-to-date collectively procured and managed portfolio of commercial infrastructure-cloud platforms made available to European R&E institutions;
• Leverage NRENs federation to become an open pan-European platform for development, proof of concepts, testing, and deployment of advanced research technologies and services (i.e. Fibre Acoustic Sensing, SMART Cables, Metrology and Quantum Communication Infrastructure);
• Achieve connectivity globally and foster Europe’s international cooperation policy objectives in line with the European Gateways Communication and the objectives of green and digital transition.

Specific conditions:

6-years Framework Partnership Agreement for Research and Education Networks with identified beneficiary and specific grants awarded to identified beneficiary for Research and Innovation Action under the Framework Partnership Agreement.

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

Purchases of equipment, infrastructure, services or other assets used for the action should be declared as depreciation costs.

Equipment, infrastructure, services or other assets (such as IRUs) purchased specifically for the activities may be declared as full capitalised costs taking into account that their life span may extend after the duration of the action and beyond the FPA coverage.

The standard evaluation criteria, thresholds, weighting for award criteria and the maximum rate of co-financing for this type of action are provided in parts D and G of the General Annexes with the following exceptions for the evaluation criteria:

For the criterion Excellence the following sub-criteria apply:

• Clarity and pertinence of the project’s objectives, including their relevance to the overarching goals of the FPA. Extent to which the proposed work is ambitious, and goes beyond the state-of-the-art.
• Soundness of the proposed methodology, including the business model approach on service delivery and provision of innovative services and the related metrics.
• Effectiveness and agility in developing new services according to the needs of a wide user base across multiple disciplines for excellent science and research.