The Consortium has backed-up, supported, monitored and synthesised the activities and services provided by the EOSC Secretariat to and for the EOSC Executive Board, first of all by maintaining an operational oversight of logistical activities of the entire project. Secondly, by overseeing the various support services requested as part of the EOSC governance framework and the objectives of the call. Thirdly, by delivering a synthesis of the various EOSC Secretariat products to the EB and to the Stakeholder community. In fourth place, by dealing with the organisation and management of co-creation activities to back-up the facilitation of the community engagement and managing the budget related to the co-creation activities. The co-creation process established in 2019 have seen the evaluation of 42 budget request for a total amount of more than 350k EUR.
Keeping in mind the participatory nature of EOSC, which requires a governance framework able to ensure a proper representation of the stakeholders (providers and consumers of EOSC), EOSC Secretariat has strived to facilitate stakeholders in playing an intelligence gathering and a consultative role, preparing the ground for the more stakeholder-driven second phase pf the EOSC implementation.
The Secretariat assisted the Working Groups in formalizing their scoping, mission, outputs and timelines and established Secretariat contact points that serve as communication links among the WGs-EB-Secretariat consortium and as assistants that support the WG Chairs in organizational, logistical, operational, secretarial tasks. More specifically WG operational support translates into setting rules of use and providing to the WGs collaborative tools such as mailing lists, file repository, dedicated spaces in the EOSC Secretariat website, feedback liaison platform, collaborative drive spaces.
The Secretariat has produced and provided WGs with relevant background material in support to their activities. It has actively and on several occasions and by different means (presentation at EB meeting, webinar, email messages, through WG contact) points informed working groups and their chairs about the possibility to request studies to be commissioned on the topics of interest.
Secretariat role of support to the EOSC Governance is the backbone of all projects' activities. In 2019 Secretariat has supported the organisation of 7 Executive Board meetings. For each of them the Secretariat took care of all organisational aspects as well as of the provision of reports, studies, documents.
EOSC Secretariat has been the main channel for the Governance to reach out for the Stakeholder community in order to gather inputs, feedback and knowledge about the most recent development in this field. On the other hand, EOSCsecretariat.eu has been the natural instrument (as described also in its Grant Agreement) for the community to learn about the Governance in first place and then to get in contact with it.
The EOSC Governance Results Dissemination Campaign has aimed at disseminating the outputs relating to the governance of the EOSC from, but not limiting to, the EOSC EB, and the EOSC WGs. In this respect EOSCsecretariat.eu website is hosting sections on Governance and Working Groups continuously populated with outputs produced by these Boards. EOSC Governance was put in the condition of meeting the community through 2 webinars and 2 EOSC stakeholder forums events attracting 1000+ participants. Furthermore, a Liaison platform is now acting as permanent channel for EOSC governance dissemination. This goes in parallel to the active posting on social media about the activities of the Working Groups, which are also displayed in monthly newsletters. EOSC Secretariat has also made publicly available the Strategic Implementation Plan and the Workplan elaborated by the EB.
The EOSCsecretariat.eu website has developed an informative part with engagement features such as the Liaison platform and “ask a question”, which has seen the presence of 3,900 ca. unique visitors per month. Secretariat has also been active on social media channels with on average 11 tweets per week and with 1,000+ Twitter followers and has produced a series of videos featuring interviews with researchers and members of community. Two major events preceded by a thorough and intense campaign have to be mentioned: thee International RDA community contributing to EOSC (Helsinki, 22 October 2019, 230 participants) and EOSC symposium (Budapest, 26-29 November 2019, 320 participants). In both occasions plenary sessions and workshops focussing on EB and WG activities have been organised. Additionally, an EOSC press conference took place during the EOSC Symposium. Three articles were published after the events.
