The HUB for boosting the Responsibility and inclusiveness of ICT enabled Research and Innovation through constructive interactions with SSH research

Project Information

HubIT

Grant agreement ID: 769497

DOI

10.3030/769497

Project closed

EC signature date 7 August 2017

Start date 1 September 2017

End date 28 February 2021

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 2 999 750,00

EU contribution

€ 2 999 750,00

Coordinated by

CIVITTA EESTI AS
Estonia

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HubIT (The HUB for boosting the Responsibility and inclusiveness of ICT enabled Research and Innovation through constructive interactions with SSH research)

Reporting period: 2019-03-01 to 2021-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The HubIT project, implemented from September 2017 to February 2021 and funded under the topic REV-INEQUAL-09-2017 was a part of the overall RRI-SSH approach established by the European Commission, seen as "the pump" of the whole SSH-RRI effort in the ICT-related parts of Horizon 2020.

HubIT was a project bringing together ICT and social sciences and humanities (SSH) communities to promote the approach that when conducting research and innovation, the values, needs and expectations of society should be considered. To achieve this, the project facilitated the principles of responsible research and innovation (RRI). It means that societal actors should work together to make the ICT research and innovation process human-centered and driven from societal needs. In the digital era where the impact of ICT related developments in product and service design is mostly not known in advance, taking a pro-active responsible approach is of the utmost importance.

Thus, the role of the HubIT project was to: provide to ICT and SSH stakeholders from Horizon 2020 projects and beyond a space to meet face-to-face and virtually; inspire them to work together; provide a set of practical tools to get started; guide them to Horizon 2020 new funding opportunities; and give insights to policy makers regarding the grassroot level challenges to be overcome to enable ICT-SSH collaboration to take place. To have a wide outreach the HubIT, running from 2017-2021, consisted of 14 organizations from 10 countries: Estonia (coordinator), Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia and United Kingdom.

The long-term strategic objective of HubIT was to contribute to the high quality and impact of European research and innovation and ensure that Horizon funded and further ICT related innovation is responsible, inclusive and aimed at reversing inequalities. The direct objective of HubIT was to build a Hub that activates and improves constructive and co-creative interactions between SSH and ICT disciplines in developing and implementing a shared vision of inclusive ICT research and innovation.

To make the project activities visible an interactive web-platform called the HubIT Metropolis has been launched (www.hubit-project.eu). It is an interactive platform that supports the ICT-SSH community to kick-off collaborations. It is a place to find information on Horizon projects and stakeholders who are interested in making ICT innovations closer to social challenges and needs.

To large extent the HubIT project was about organizing events to bring the ICT and SSH communities together and develop ideas for future collaboration. The events are primarily aimed at building the ICT-SSH community and activities in the last year of the project aimed to move ICT-SSH collaboration forward at a very practical level in bringing people together at hackathons, ICT maker labs and a Common Ground Camp.

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 main exploitable results of the HubIT project are:
• Web platform HubIT Metropolis and its resources
The platform has been designed to provide an understandable journey to the user. To be in line with the new messages of the project, the website is structured into 3 stations: Understand, Collaborate, Monitor with the resources divided among them. Main exploitable resources are the Matchmaking Tool, Social hub, Assessment Toolbox, Actors and Projects Database. In total the website was able to gather more than 11k visitors in 18k sessions and viewed a total of 46k pages. About 40% of the users were returning visitors. The visitors of the website were from 137 countries.

Events methodologies
• Methodology of inclusive hackathons called in HubIT project as designathons
• Methodology of ICT Maker Labs
• Methodology of the Common Ground Camp
The assessment results indicate that the participants were highly satisfied as collaborative events increased their awareness to RRI approach. Implementing these methodologies in future events as well as educational curricula could raise awareness and extend the knowledge about RRI approach sustaining the long-term impact of the project.

• HubIT social media channels
The resources developed by HubIT will be actively used by Robotics4EU project. As far as possible the social media channels and newsletter format will be taken over by the Robotics4EU project.

During the project as part of the 30+events and activities that took place, about 1700 participants have been involved directly, covered an extensive area of knowledge from different positions and expertise (e.g. researchers, decision makers) from SSH and ICT fields. The heterogeneity of the participants in the various activities created the base for mutual dialogue, raised awareness of the needs, challenges, and thoughts in the context of RRI in ICT as well as potential for future collaboration. 49 innovation ideas emerged in different fields as a result of the HubIT events bringing together ICT and SSH experts. The assessment results indicate that 79% of participants found the HubIT events as highly useful in terms of increasing their awareness to RRI approach and gaining relevant skills. The results indicate a high understanding and agreement of the importance for SSH contribution in developing ICT solutions.

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)

In total 30+ events were be organised to bring together the ICT and SSH community and boost practical and experimental collaboration, also the HubIT Metropolis has reached high visibility.

• 3 speed-dating events
• 10 national workshops
• 3 international thematic workshops
• 4 international policy workshops
• 1 SSH researchers´ workshop
• 1 ICT industries workshop
• 3 annual conferences
• 5 inclusive hackathons/designathons
• 1 ICT maker labs
• 1 Common Ground Camp

Additionally to the above mentioned events an Expert Group workshop, 4 webinars and a joint workshof with the SISCODE project as well as 3 Advisory Board workshops were organised.

The impact assessment of RRI in the project can be described as follows: Establishing RRI ecosystem platform – European Framework Model which provides infrastructure for knowledge sharing and mutual dialogue between different stakeholders; Developing and conducting networking activities, including various types of events; Engaging wide range of stakeholders from different fields of knowledge (ICT and SSH); Producing innovative ideas that may lead to future projects and policy recommendations to be implemented in different levels (national, international and EU). All of these have the potential to create an impact that will lead to RRI uptake on: Policy regulations & incentives, Education & Training curricula, Ethics procedures, Raising Awareness, Foresight & Technology Assessment, and joint SSH&ICT projects.

Image of the web platform HubIT Metropolis

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