NGI Research Goes To Standardisation

Project Information

NGI Assure

Grant agreement ID: 957073

DOI

10.3030/957073

Project closed

EC signature date 4 August 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 August 2024

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 7 999 993,75

EU contribution

€ 7 999 993,75

Coordinated by

PNO DIGITAL SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NGI Assure (NGI Research Goes To Standardisation)

Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The internet lies at the heart of our modern economies and societies, but it was not designed to be used in the way we use it now. Additional innovations are needed, in particular to make usage of remote resources on the internet more trustworthy and secure. The goal of NGI Assure to support projects that design and engineer reusable building blocks for the Next Generation Internet as part of a complete, strong chain of assurances for all stakeholders regarding the source and integrity of identities, identifiers, data, cyberphysical systems, service components and processes. Furthermore contributions can be made to address underlying real-world challenges in deploying and validating such building blocks, such as energy efficiency and sustainability, scalability and throughput, security, privacy/confidentiality, plausible deniability, robustness and crypto-agility, side-channel resistance, interoperability, governance and compliance to regulatory frameworks - where needed to turn the above into reproducible and trustworthy end-to-end solutions that can withstand the hostile battle grounds of the modern internet.

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

Key results achieved in line with Annex 1 of the Grant Agreement (DoA)
• 152 NGI Assure projects were successfully completed from 13 open calls launched, managed, evaluated and concluded; 972 applications were received (550 in Reporting Period 2) and 249 projects reached the second evaluation phase. A total of €5.718.850 was awarded.
• All Milestones achieved.
• Series of high-impact Dissemination and Communication activities carried out including visibility of NGI programme.
• All 50 deliverables were submitted. 28 deliverables were submitted in the last Reporting Period. 22 deliverables had been submitted in the previous period and had been approved.
• 25 projects formally linked to the NGI Assure.
• Finalization of the PEDR.

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)

The first expected impact is to shape a more human-centric evolution of the Internet. NGI ASSURE contributes to this impact by putting the persons as the core of the of the projects making compulsory for all the BuPs the application of ethical values with the focus on minimizing issues related to privacy, negative environmental and adversary AI.

The second expected impact is to reinforce the European Blockchain ecosystem and excellence in research by making sure that the most innovative communities are represented in the NGI ASSURE Community, to liaise with the Open Source Communities, technical and operational community and Standardisation Organisations, to keep in sync with relevant technological development, to improve the excellence research of the BuPs by having them in contact, along the full process, with specialised experts, and more.

The third expected impact is related to promote interoperability and strengthening the role of Europe in international standardisation by supporting only BuPs that commits to generate Open Knowledge as result of their projects in the shape of “Open Source Software”, and “Open Access” accordingly with the nature of the result, being software of other intangible piece of knowledge

The fourth expected impact is to create a European blockchain ecosystem integrating research and innovation communities. The NGI ASSURE proposes an innovative process to identify the most outstanding researchers and innovators in the blockchain domain (by means of the scouting process to be done by applying data analytics techniques through Wheesbee Platform) and an agile and flexible Open Call process (a two stages process, continuously open, with several cut-off dates) to facilitate their onboarding into the blockchain ecosystem.

The fifth expected impact is to generate new business opportunities and new Internet companies with maximum growth and impact chances.

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