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e-Infrastructure Reflection Group Support Programme 5

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - e-IRGSP5 (e-Infrastructure Reflection Group Support Programme 5)

Reporting period: 2017-12-01 to 2018-11-30

The e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG) is a recognised key advisory body on e-Infrastructure policies in Europe. e-IRG is composed of two national delegates from the EU Member States and Associated Countries.

The e-IRG mission is „to support both coherent, innovative and strategic European e-Infrastructure policy making and the development of convergent and sustainable e-Infrastructure services“. Following this mission e-IRG sees itself as a „strategic body to facilitate integration in the area of European e-Infrastructures and connected services, within and between member states, at the European level and globally“. In accordance with this vision and mission e-IRG has developed the concept of the e-Infrastructure Commons, which is a political, technological, and administrative framework for an easy and cost-effective shared use of distributed electronic resources across Europe. The e-Infrastructure Commons concept is seen as the foundation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

The implementation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and the European Data Infrastructure (EDI) is a landmark for e-IRG in the realisation of the Commons, which e-IRG is following up and has been contributing to related developments, e.g. by co-organising and participating in the EOSC Governance Development Forum workshop in Tallinn that was attached to the e-IRG workshop. A key panel on EOSC policy development was also staffed by e-IRG delegates. The implementation of the EOSC is also a point for reorientation of e-IRG. Thus, after the publication of the e-IRG Roadmap and the KPI document, e-IRG has entered a phase of analysis and reflection towards developments in the e-Infrastructure area, both towards and beyond the European Open Science Cloud. This process has been supported by the support project for the advancement of e-IRG.

The e-IRG Support Programme 5 (e-IRGSP5) is the fifth support programme to e-IRG. The main objective of e-IRGSP5 is to support e-IRG, the e-IRG Chair and Executive Board and the delegates. e-IRGSP5 is providing support around the development of policy documents through e-IRG Working Groups and Task Forces. These policy-related activities are accompanied by appropriate dissemination and communication activities. Furthermore, e-IRGSP5 is tasked by the Commission to collect and aggregate relevant policy information with impact on the development of EC-funded e-Infrastructures, including KPIs and cost-related information to enable e-IRG and external experts to provide strategic advice on the evolution of the European e-Infrastructure landscape and associated costs.
The activities of the project are carried out through five work packages and most partners are involved in two or more work packages. These five work packages are: Project Management (WP1), Secretariat (WP2), Policy Support (WP3), Policy Information Collection and Aggregation (WP4) and Dissemination and Communication (WP5). The distribution of efforts is depicted in Table 2: Distribution of Efforts per Work Package.

Work Package 1 - Project Management is responsible for an efficient project management and coordination of the overall project activities. The activities of WP1 include the coordination of the internal e-IRGSP5 activities and the liaison between e-IRGSP5 and the e-IRG Executive Board and the delegates.
The other activities of the support programme are largely defined by the needs of e-IRG.

Work Package 2 - Secretariat provides the project office to e-IRGSP5. WP2 has supported the e-IRG governing entities, the Chair and the Executive Board, and was involved in the organisation and conduction of e-IRG events (workshops and delegates meetings) under EU Council Presidencies of Malta and Estonia. WP2 prepared minutes and summary reports from these meetings for the delegates and the wider public. These documents are published on the e-IRG website. WP2 has also supported e-IRG in its reorientation phase.

Work Package 3 - Policy Support provides support to e-IRG’s Working Groups and Task Forces in the creation process of policy documents. During the reporting period the most notable outcome is the finalisation of two e-IRG documents which have been mainly produced with support of the preceding e-IRG Support Programme. These documents are the e-IRG Roadmap 2016 and the KPI document Evaluation of e-Infrastructures and the development of related Key Performance Indicators. In addition, e-IRGSP5 provided support to different e-IRG Working Groups and Task Forces, which will produce their outcome in the next reporting period and supported e-IRG in its reorientation phase.

Work Package 4 - Policy Information Collection and Aggregation builds on the outcome of the e-IRG Task Force on the evaluation of e-Infrastructures (see e-IRG document Evaluation of e-Infrastructures and the development of related Key Performance Indicators - KPIs), which provides a framework for the development of ontologies for the classification of performance metrics of e-Infrastructure projects. The work of WP4 included also a procedure to facilitate association, comparison and analysis of pertinent information. In this reporting period, the work package developed categorisation, metrics and correlation procedures, which provides the overall methodology and framework and will be used in the second reporting period to gather feedback from the various stakeholders.

Work Package 5 - Dissemination, Liaison and Communication disseminates the outcome of e-IRG over various channels. In the reporting period WP5 has provided e-Infrastructure related information to the stakeholders through the news blog on e-IRG’s web presence and via the e-IRG newsletter. WP5 has been very actively distributing information via its social media channels, including Twitter, LinkedIn and Vimeo. In particular, the production of videos with interviews with key persons from the area of e-Infrastructures, e-IRG delegates and stakeholders is very well accepted by the intended audience. Finally, WP5 maintains the e-IRG Knowledge Base, which provides a centralised information point on e-Infrastructures at the European and the national level.
e-IRGSP5 by its support to e-IRG will have the following impact on national and European e-Infrastructure ecosystems:
* Help to shape the future European e-Infrastructures and consequently the way the European Research Area will develop.
* Reinforce the alignment of policies, best practices and strategies.
* Stimulate interaction between policy makers, users, and providers of e-Infrastructures and thus foster integration and collaboration of e-Infrastructures.
* Trigger multi-disciplinary networking and collaboration to orchestrate harmonised development of e-Infrastructures.
* The harmonised development of e-Infrastructures will optimise resource usage and increase in the long-term the competitiveness of Europe in the long-term.
* Help the stakeholders to define its real requirements according to the shape of e-Infrastructure.
* Raise the awareness of the work of e-IRG and increase the engagement of stakeholders and citizen researchers.
* Help the stakeholders to position themselves in the e-Infrastructure arena and to initiate collaborations.
* Initiate research on new topics, which may influence further work of e-IRG or may be an initial step to work on a new policy statement, e.g. Blue or White Paper.
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