Releases 2 and 3 of ELG: The interim release was launched in March 2021 as scheduled, with enriched functionalities focusing on the LT provider side. The final release of the ELG platform was published in March 2022 and integrates all components and functionalities required for a fully operational platform for LT providers and consumers. During the second reporting period, the implementation of the ELG platform has been continued with the development and integration of new components, as planned in the initial workplan, and the improvement and enhancement of the previously integrated components. The design and implementation has taken into account the functional and technical requirements and technological decisions made in the previous reporting period, the continuous feedback from ELG users, pilot and collaborating projects, and the specifications set to address the import of metadata records from other repositories and infrastructures.
Functional Services integrated into the ELG: During the course of the second reporting period, the inventory of tools and services integrated in the ELG plat-form has grown hugely. At the end of the first period (M18) there were 115 fully-integrated LT tool/service metadata records in the ELG platform, by the end of the project this number had grown to over 900, with nearly 200 further services still in the process of integration at this point. However these numbers are an under-estimate of the true coverage of the platform, as one metadata record may offer multiple service functions (e.g. one ser-vice providing both part-of-speech tagging and lemmatisation) and/or may offer support for several different languages (e.g. a multilingual translation model that can translate from any of several source languages into the same target language). Counting these function and language combinations individually gives a total of 1,948 distinct services fully integrated by the end of the project, in addition to a further 2,000+ metadata records repre-senting LT tools or services that are not fully integrated with the ELG platform API specifications.
LRs integrated into the ELG: The second important ingredient in the platform is the population of the ELG catalogue with datasets and language resources. During the second reporting period, the provision of non-functional content through the ELG platform was a high priority as well as the ensuring of an appropriate legal framework for such content and all other data within the platform. Thanks to a huge integration effort, 10,061 metadata records could be integrated. This number of datasets accessible through the ELG platform goes far beyond our expectations.
Open Calls for Pilot Projects: Within the ELG runtime, open calls for small-scale demonstration projects based on the call ICT-29a) specification were specified and implemented, using the Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP). Two open calls were organised and 15 pilot projects in total were selected for funding and executed, amounting for a funding of EUR 1,948,311 in total. The projects’ results were included in the ELG platform to allow for wide dissemination and testing and external evaluation by other entities and/or the public. All 15 projects were concluded very successfully. The main goal – to attract SMEs and research organisations to either contribute additional tools or resources to the ELG platform or develop applications using Language Technologies available in the ELG platform – was more than achieved.
META-FORUM 2020, 2021 and 2022 – National Competence Centres (NCCs): Within the first six months of the project, the network of 32 NCCs had beeb successfully set up. During the second half of the project, the NCCs were responsible for conducting the ELG workshops which were planned as a dissemination activity on national levels within the European countries. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, from the 20 workshops that were carried out,16 were held in an online format, one in a hybrid format and three took place on-site.
Because of the pandemic situation, META-FORUM 2020 and 2021 took place as an online conferences over three days with a half-day programme each, containing presentations, panel discussions and large project expos. Because of the improved circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2022, META-FORUM 2022 was organised as a hybrid event over two days in Brussels. All three events proved to be very successful and the organisers received a lot of positive feedback from various stakeholders both during and after the events.
