Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Bridge2HE (BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN HORIZONS THROUGH TRANSNATIONAL COOPERATION OF ITS NCP SUPPORT STRUCTURES) Reporting period: 2020-11-01 to 2022-10-31 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project The National Contact Point (NCP) systems are support structures established by Member States (MS) and Associated Countries (AC) and recognized by the European Commission (EC) in order to help participants access the different EU Programme opportunities. For Horizon 2020 (H2020) there were 21 NCP functions apart from the NCP coordinator, giving support to participants across the different parts of H2020. In order to ensure cooperation among NCPs from different countries, improve mutual learning between them and develop dedicated transnational tools and services for participants, the European Commission has historically funded them through NCP networks CSA projects, in variable geometry of partners, covering typically one NCP “function” per project and renewing it, with a follow-on project, approximately at the middle of each Framework Programme. Taking advantage that most of the current H2020 NCP network projects finalize at the end of 2020 and that the new NCP network projects will not start at least until Q4 of 2021, this project, under the leadership of the national NCP coordinators aims to lead the effective integration of the NCP systems into a more coherent frame of work for Horizon Europe. This integrative approach does not mean that there will not be function-based NCP network projects in the future but on the contrary, it means that, when they exist, they will benefit from sharing common internal and external tools and, furthermore, from a stable and unique entry to its knowledge and services through a single “Horizon Europe NCP Portal”. Mirroring the “Funding and Tenders Portal” of the European Commission, where anyone can find all the official framework programme information, this “Horizon Europe NCP Portal” aims to concentrate the NCP offer of knowledge and services for both NCPs and participants into a single place during the whole duration of the programme. While this is one of the ultimate goals of this project, the timeframe when this is occurring, between two Framework programmes, calls for an inclusive approach with all the NCP network projects and also with all H2020 and Horizon Europe nominated NCPs, not only those from the host organizations included in this consortium but also those from other institutions or countries which are not. This implies that the project will also work intensively in supporting both NCPs and participants offering them events, training and tools in this transition period. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far The project included 9 WPs that were supporting closely the two key objectives of the project, namely to create and populate a coherent Horizon Europe NCP Portal and to support NCPs and participants in the first calls of Horizon Europe. The main outputs of each WP can be summarized below. WP1 – Training coordination, e-learning platform & course. WP outputs:• 3 Training plans• Virtual Campus e-learning platform, fully customized, including 8 MOOC courses. WP2 – Generation of training contentWP outputs:• 26 Training sessions organized.• All training documents and recording (if done) are available through the Horizon Europe NCP Portal, academy section.WP3 – Supporting participants in relevant EU events.WP outputs:• 10 Brokerage events to support participants from most clusters for the 2021 and 2022 calls.• 2 Full proposal check events to support participants from Cluster 1 and Cluster 6.WP4 – Tools and services for participantsWP outputs:• Toolkit maintained from H2020 in the transition period (topic tree, partner search guide, Transnational Virtual Access Database for RI)• New set of tools for Horizon Europe developed (HE Glossary & HE in 3 minutes video collection, TRL assessment tool and the Annotated template for RIA-IA, Opportunities for researchers from the SSH in HE calls) WP5 – Design Box for NCP systemWP outputs:• 3 Meet & Exchange Workshops organized + 6 ad-hoc sessions organized for NCP National coordinators• Maintenance and improvement of the FAQs database of Legal & Financial NCP community. • An NCP-restricted repository area within the HE NCP Portal with relevant content. • A position paper on the future of HE NCPs beyond BRIDGE2HEWP6 – Enhancing low participation countries' NCP system. WP outputs:• 4 Meet & Exchange organized. • Twinning program set-up, delivered and reported for more than 50 menteesWP7 – Horizon Europe NCP Portal.WP outputs:• A fully operative HE NCP Portal that gives access to the whole range of activities conducted by the project and beyond, relevant to Horizon Europe NCPs.• An integrated virtual campus within the HE NCP Portal Academy section.• A set of thematic microsites hosted in the Portal to allow any NCP network to integrate in the Portal under a customizable framework. (7 agreements in place to join the Portal with 4 more in discussion). WP 8 – Dissemination and Communication ActivitiesWP outputs:• A communication and dissemination strategy• Social network accounts (Twitter and YouTube) from the HE NCP Portal.• Periodic HE NCP Portal newsletter (11 in total) reaching the whole NCP community.• A digital communication kit from the project and the HE NCP Portal, comprising three brochures and four videos. • A table game on HE called FUNDED in printed version, also available to be downloaded from the Portal WP 9 – Project management.WP outputs:• Project dashboard reported within D9.1 as the main tool to monitor the project progress.• Periodic project progress reports at M8 and M16 (D9.5 and D9.8) have allowed to monitor the project implementation properly. A final conference of the project was organized together with the European Commission in a hybrid format, back-to-back to NCP National Coordinators meeting in Brussels (21st November 2022). In this final conference, the main achievements of the project were presented including the key legacy that this project leaves for the future. The HE NCP Portal with an embedded Virtual Campus and thematic customizable microsites. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) The project has successfully accomplished its objective with the outputs generated and described above. The main results of the project and their impact can be summarized below:The HE NCP Portal is fully available with all publications and tools running at https://horizoneuropencpportal.euA beta version is running from Q2 2021 and a full version is running from Q2 2022 with continuous updates since then.A wide reach is achieved by the Portal with more than 50k visits per year with almost 200k pages viewed.The Virtual Campus within the HE NCP Portal is available and includes already 8 MOOCs with free enrolment for NCPs and participants. More than 3k users have access to the Virtual Campus during the promotion of the courses with more than 29k page views.26 online training sessions organized: (Total of 2.689 participants attending, 96% NCPs (100 NCP on average)10 Brokerage events have been held. (5 for 2021 calls, 5 for 2022 calls) with more than 16k participants and more than 12k bilateral meetings 2 Full proposal check events have been organized for Cluster 1 and Cluster 6 with 18 participants selected. 7 Meet & Exchange workshops for NCPs have been organized with around 50 NCP participants on average.4 new tools have been developed for Horizon Europe (The Horizon Europe Glossary, the 3 Min HE Video Collection, the TRL self-assessment tool and the Annotated RIA-IA template. HE NCP Portal view constructed under BRIDGE2HE project
