Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DAPSI (Data Portability and Services Incubator)
Période du rapport: 2021-05-01 au 2022-12-31
DAPSI has supported 46 teams to research and apply advancement to relevant uses cases through a 10-month dedicated programme. Experts in diverse fields have provided access to top infrastructure, training in business and data related topics, coaching, mentoring, visibility and community building. On top of that, each DAPSI team has received up to €150k€ equity-free funding, with a total amount of €5.6M€ to be distributed through three open calls.
The project is operated by 6 partners: Zabala Innovation Consulting (Spain), F6S (Ireland), Cap Digital (France), IMT Starter (France), Fraunhofer IAS (Germany), and Engineering (Italy).
The objectives in the project:
• Ob1: To assure that the relevant research domains in Services and Data Portability are addressed and assessed to contribute to the advance in this field.
• Ob2: To select the best applicants to take part in DAPSI programme through three competitive open calls.
• Ob3: To support the selected Third Parties in the research and use cases implementation, through two phases funding scheme and providing supporting services during the process. A team could obtain up to €150,000 equity-free funding plus a range of free services.
• Ob4: To provide access to the DAPSI infrastructure and promote its adoption through effective training and troubleshooting during the programme.
• Ob5: To monitor the services provision performance, satisfaction and adaption to user demand in order to implement the corrective actions for an improved offer.
• Ob6: To create a community of stakeholders and coordinate the work with other NGI initiatives and projects to benefit each other from peers’ achievements and align it with the EC strategy for NGI.
• Ob7: To communicate and disseminate DAPSI progress and related success uses cases.
• Definition of the research domains and type of projects to be supported.
• Definition of the open call rules, materials and procedures.
• Launch of the open calls
• Evaluation and selection of projects to engage the DAPSI programme
• Definition of the Support programme in 2 phases with continuous coaching, mentoring, training, access to resources (infrastructure, visibility, etc) and assessment of their progress. Evaluation and Final events held at the end of each phase.
The results achieved in each open call:
OC1:
• Launch of the open call (February 2020 - April 2020) with 182 applications submitted.
• Evaluation and selection of 11 projects with distribution of more than 1.3M€.
• As part of the programme approach, divided in two phases, seven projects progressed to the second phase. The selection was carried out in a competition event.
OC2:
• Launch of the open call (November 2020 - January 2021) with 176 applications submitted.
• Evaluation and selection of 15 projects with allocation of more than 1.6M€.
• From the total number of teams in Phase 1 (15), 14 TPs reached the threshold, so they received the full second payment to them (one payment was partially retained). One of the teams withdrew the project at the beginning of Phase 2 so it was not evaluated or paid for the work in the Phase 2. For the other 14 projects, all of them reached the threshold and all the payments were released (including the retained money of one team), finishing the participation in January 2022.
OC3:
• Launch of the open call (September 2021 - November 2021), with 147 applications submitted.
• Evaluation and selection of 20 projects with allocation of more than 2.4M€.
• From the total number of teams in Phase 1 (20), 19 TPs reached the threshold, so they passed to Phase 2 and received the full second payment. In Phase 2, all of them (19) reached the threshold and all the payments were released, finishing the participation in October 2022.
With the support provided to the 46 projects, a total number of 76 exploitable assets were identified and at least 35 were open-source available for the community. In addition, on the commercial side, 77% of TPs have confirmed that they have gained clients after the participation in DAPSI.
All these projects are promoted in the project website with a dedicated Hall of Fame including the description of each project and team, as well as presence in the NGI catalogue as a portal gathering all the NGI funded results.
For OC1, the 11 projects selected addressed: Data Compatibility & Interoperability as a challenge chosen by the majority of them (64%), Data Transparency (45%), Security & Privacy (36%), and finally Other (18%).
For OC2, the 15 projects selected (multiple choice): Service Portability (67%) as the challenge chosen by many of the applicants (69%), Data Compatibility & Interoperability and Security & Privacy (60%) each.
For OC3, the 20 projects selected: Data Compatibility & Interoperability as the challenge chosen by many of the applicants (65%), Service Portability (60%), Security & Privacy (5%), Data Sovereignty (50%) and Data Transparency (35%).
IMPACT: The projects have a huge social impact for European citizens: As users of the internet, citizens sometimes feel as if their data is no longer under their own control. When some online service conveniently stores users’ data for without even asking, it often turns out impossible to get it out in one piece later on. That is a problem that becomes increasingly urgent if a user decides to stop using a service – for instance because the user realises that the company is seriously violating privacy, doing business in an unethical way, overcharging him/her or just because the user run into serious limitations of the service. At that point in time citizens need service portability and data portability: a convenient way to switch services and take own data with without unnecessary friction. An important way to reach these goals is through free and open-source software that to be run anywhere – either on an own machine, or anywhere in the cloud. At least 35 open-source results have been delivered at the end of the project. This last point is key for DAPSI, and this is way the delivery of open-source results by the projects is a requirement to be funded.
ECONOMIC IMPACT: The purpose of some of the projects is not only to contribute to the internet community but to also do business with their developments, what it is also key to guarantee the sustainability. An analysis of this impact was carried after the completion of the DAPSI programme revealing that on average (with data surveyed to the TPs from the three calls): 59% indicated team growth, 70% progress in terms of clients gained, their community grew in 70% of the cases, 68% created new partnerships & collaborations, 43% established new contacts with investors and 46% had an increase in their revenues.