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.
