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Research and Education Networking – GÉANT

 

Specific challenge: GÉANT is recognised as the European communications commons that supports the rise of compute- and data-intensive collaborative research and education through innovative services, operational excellence and global reach. There is a clear need to further develop and maintain GÉANT in this role.

Scope: GÉANT will:

(1) Provide cost-effective and reliable services for very high-speed connectivity, identity inter-federation, resource virtualisation, mobility and trust in order to support knowledge communities, ensuring digital continuum of services to users anywhere in the EU.

(2) Enable talent anywhere in the world to cooperate with their peers in Europe through interoperable services, as well as extend beyond the traditional researcher base into wider public services where appropriate.

(3) Advance the state-of-the-art of the communication commons by constant development of both innovative multi-domain services and their use, and by translating this innovation into a competitive European ICT sector, for instance through: specific open calls; pre-commercial procurement; public-private partnerships between industry, academia and user communities to develop, experiment with or validate novel technologies in the telecom and internet domains; and exploring with industry possibilities of service provisioning through aggregation of demand and brokerage, new business models, best practices or coordination.

(4) Cope with the changing environment by structuring the governance of the European communications commons for accountability, measurability, transparency and sustainability; focusing on flexible services geared towards users; stimulating development of GÉANT's human capital (including training and exchange schemes); and aligning the regulatory, standardisation and policy framework to enable full exploitation of the communications commons.

GÉANT should provide core and basic operation services including identity federation, in coordination with other e-infrastructure providers to promote interoperability and a seamless user experience.

The long-term cooperation between the Commission and the selected consortium will be formalised within a Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) covering the duration of Horizon 2020[1] to provide a stable environment for the implementation of GÉANT as the European communication commons and with an indicative average yearly EU funding of EUR 25 million per year[2]. This agreement shall specify the common objectives, the nature of actions planned and the general rights and obligations of each party..

Within this framework, the Commission intends to award Specific Grants[3] to the selected consortium, in order to implement the action plan agreed in the FPA, in accordance with the procedures laid down in the FPA (see also section on ""Other actions"").

Expected impact: By 2020 GÉANT is the European communications commons where talent anywhere is able to collaborate with their peers around the world and have instantaneous and unlimited access to any resource for knowledge creation, innovation and learning, unconstrained by the barriers of the pre-digital and the present digital world. Europe is the hub for research networking excellence world-wide. The GÉANT governance is able to cope with the changing environment and the GÉANT community collaborates intensively with European industry and academia, produces innovative solutions grounded on business needs and drives the internet evolution.

Type of action: Framework Partnership Agreement with multiple beneficiaries (no funding) providing a framework for Specific Grants

[1]  As per Article 178 of the Rules of Application of the Financial Regulation and Article 16(6) of the Rules for Participation

[2]  Subject to budget availability, successful evaluation and commission decision

[3]     Awarding of specific grants will follow the rules and procedures established in the Financial Regulation