Co-Create Change in Research Funding and Performing

Project Information

Co-Change

Grant agreement ID: 873112

DOI

10.3030/873112

Project closed

EC signature date 26 November 2019

Start date 1 February 2020

End date 30 April 2023

Funded under

• Develop the governance for the advancement of responsible research and innovation by all stakeholders, which is sensitive to society needs and demands and promote an ethics framework for research and innovation

Total cost

€ 1 498 833,75

EU contribution

€ 1 498 833,75

Coordinated by

AIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GMBH
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Co-Change (Co-Create Change in Research Funding and Performing)

Reporting period: 2021-05-01 to 2023-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

What is the problem/issue being addressed?

Our societies currently are facing huge challenges, which are endangering democracies and even human life itself. Research and innovation provide tools to meet these challenges and to support change. Co-Change wants to inspire responsibility-oriented change in research performing and research funding organisations. Together, we are introducing new practices regarding research ethics, open access, open science, transparency, accountability, stakeholder engagement, science education, gender equality and sustainability.


Why is it important for society?

Innovations are changing our lives extremely quickly. If we take the example of the smartphone, which was presented to the public only in 2007, it is clear that during the last decade it has transformed the way we communicate, retrieve and share private and professional information, socialise, take pictures, use public transportation, stay in touch with friends abroad and many other acts of daily life. The smartphone can be understood as a bundle of innovations, the use of which has impacted our lives in many positive ways as mentioned above. However, these innovations also have negative consequences, for example, new psychological phenomena such as smartphone addiction. They have also enabled the rise of the platform economy, with powerful platforms such as Google, Amazon and Facebook, with associated dangers to privacy, since the business models of these firms are built on the private data extracted from their users through their services. Scientific researchers and research communities are expected by society to be responsive to these societal concerns and issues. Societal actors and citizens will gain greater trust in science if research performing and funding organisations and the entire research and innovation system readily address the societal challenges that citizens and their communities are struggling with.


What are the overall objectives?

- To initiate and implement institutional changes in the areas of the 5 European Commission RRI keys: Citizen Engagement, Gender Equality, Open Access, Research Ethics and Science Education
- To build change coalitions: by implementing the Co-Change Labs in their ecosystems, generate transformative capacity for change in terms of practices, procedures, rules and norms at the individual, organisational and system levels
- To co-create and test RRI-related practices for institutional change in research funding and performing organisations within consortium member organisations and associated partner organisations
- To make the impact of innovation on society a part of consortium member organisations’ daily routines
- To align both the project process and its outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of society to produce ethically acceptable, sustainable and socially desirable research and innovation outcomes and to assist the development of a socially, economically, ecologically and technologically more sustainable society

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Co-Change was a successful project by many measures such as the engagement of stakeholders and citizens, the number and extent of capacity building measures with practice partners, cooperation exercises with multiplier organisations, but also dissemination activities. Most importantly, the project team surpassed its goal regarding direct impact, most clearly measured by the number of institutionalised changes. We institutionalised over 50 RRI-inspired changes, most of which had an impact on our own organisations.
We also set processes in motion, which are still ongoing and expect to see more changes happening over the next years as an effect of Co-Change. Some of the institutional changes reach far beyond the project consortium, e.g. through guidelines on ethical AI for the public administration in Austria, available for the national civil service. We have cooperated with the Dutch standardisation organisation NEN production of a responsibility-by-design standard, which has been adopted amongst others by CEN on the European level, creating an impact on all European standard-setting bodies.
Co-Change experiences were synthesized for practitioners in a field book and a set of tools and shared our learnings for decision-makers in policy, industry and society via policy forums and briefs, videos, or podcasts.
Co-Change has also led to the cooperation of partners in several other activities, e.g. in follow-up projects such as the EU-funded Reinforcing (2023-2027), which is building a legacy of a decade of RRI research. The sustainability of the project is also ensured by the persistence of most Co-Change Labs, now financed through other activities.

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)

Many activities were outstanding by qualitative as well as quantitative standards and measures, e.g. we reached more than 145.000 impressions on social media, our website received more than 38.000 views and we engaged more than 900 citizens in our activities. We worked together with more than 1.500 experts, included more than 50 organisations in our networks and organised more than 70 capacity building and awareness raising measures.
Beyond metrics, we ensured the multidimensional impact of institutional changes through our bottom-up engagement strategy in the Co-Change Labs and through building change coalitions in our own as well as in and with associated partners’ organisations. Many of these have had an impact on our own organisations, e.g. the management of VTT has gone through an RRI training and this training is foreseen to be ongoing over the years to come. By similar activities, we set discussions and processes in motion, which are still ongoing. In the case of the University of Novi Sad, changes prototyped in the Faculty of Agriculture regarding gender equality and open access have been emulated in the Technical Sciences and are currently discussed at university level.
Some of the institutional changes reach far beyond the project consortium into their respective innovation ecosystems. In Austria, AIT Co-Change Lab’s guidelines for the utilisation of AI in the public service were discussed in several ministries and will have an impact on the whole public administration, one of the largest organisations in the country. In the Netherlands, the Lab at the Dutch standardisation organisation NEN led to rethinking of the way in which standards are set there, engulfed in the CWA 17796 responsibility-by-design standard. This has been adopted by CEN on the European level, creating an impact on all European standard-setting bodies.
Co-Change also led the cooperation in several other activities. Several partners are involved in the EC-funded Reinforcing consortium (2023-2027), building a legacy of a decade of RRI research, including the construction of a global RRI network. A number of topics such as AI ethics have been developed further into new projects and activities on national and international levels.
Therefore, we expect to see more changes happening over the next years as an effect of Co-Change as they will hopefully be disseminated more widely in the face of diverse sustainability challenges and/or open R&I contexts.
Finally, the sustainability of Co-Change is also ensured by the persistence of most of its Labs, which are now supported through other projects and activities linked to RRI keys such as open access and open science, gender equality or AI ethics.

co-change-architecture-1.png

co-change-architecture-2.png

co-change-poster.jpg