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UNLOCK CEI’s ambition is to UNLOCK the potential for accelerating the deployment of the Cloud-to-Edge-IoT (CEI) computing continuum in Europe by focusing on the demand-side drivers and challenges to identify technology-driven innovation and business opportunities driving demand value chains. The project represents the CEI demand constituency; provide insights and guidance to the Horizon Europe R&D projects in this domain; and contribute to a proactive dialogue with the supply stakeholders to encourage the development of an open European CEI ecosystem. It focuses on emerging value chains where investment is needed to foster the deployment of the Cloud-to-Edge-IoT continuum through the forthcoming CEI large scale pilots.

Monitoring the European Data Market
Study on behalf of the European Commission DG Connect

The main goal of the study is to measure the European data economy to support the EC's Data Value Chain policy. The policy created an innovative data ecosystem of stakeholders, enables the development of European data-driven competitiveness, and fosters commercial and social added value derived from intelligent use, management and reuse of data sources in Europe. The study aims to periodically measure and assess the data market in Europe through the European Data Market (EDM) Monitoring Tool, designed and implemented by the IDC-Open Evidence consortium. This is done to deliver factual evidence, data and qualitative insights on the diffusion of data-driven innovation in Europe, assess its actual and potential impacts on growth and jobs, and investigate the framework conditions influencing the development of the European data economy.

The study has three objectives:

• Measuring the EDM indicators, providing facts and figures on all the key features of the European data market and economy, regularly updated during the life of the project, building on the taxonomy and methodology approach previously developed and successfully implemented
• Analysing issues for the development of the data ecosystem, providing data market stories based on factual evidence, case studies and complementary data to the EDM indicators
• Mapping and visualising the stakeholders populating the EU data market

Study on behalf of EASME/ COSME, 2019 - 2021 

The EU’s industrial policy approach promotes the creation of a competitive European industry. In order to properly support the implementation of policies and initiatives, a systematic monitoring of technological trends and reliable, up-to-date data on advanced technologies is needed. To this end, the Advanced Technologies for Industry (ATI) project has been set up. It provides policymakers, industry representatives and academia with:

• Statistical data on the creation and use of advanced technologies (including information on enabling conditions such as skills, investment or entrepreneurship).
• Analytical reports on technological trends, sectoral insights and products.
• Analyses of policy measures and policy tools related to the uptake of advanced technologies.
• Analyses of technological trends in competing economies such as in the US, China or Japan.
• Access to technology centres and innovation hubs across EU countries.

All this information is available through the new Advanced Technologies for Industry Website that merges the previous KETs Observatory and Digital Transformation Monitor initiatives. The project focuses on the advanced technologies that will enable and help industries to successfully manage a shift towards a low-carbon and knowledge-based economy. The following 16 advanced technologies have been identified:

• Advanced Manufacturing Technology
• Advanced Materials
• Artificial Intelligence
• Augmented and Virtual Reality
• Big Data
• Blockchain
• Cloud Computing
• Connectivity
• Industrial Biotechnology
• Internet of Things
• Micro- and Nanoelectronics
• Mobility
• Nanotechnology
• Photonics
• Robotics
• Security

H2020 project – 2019 - 2022

OPEN DEI will be an essential pillar of the implementation of Digitising European Industry policies by addressing in particular the support to pilot activities and knowledge transfer across different sectors. It will provide the necessary measures, channels and mechanisms to ensure cooperation between pilot projects so that synergies can be exploited, knowledge can be shared, and impact is maximized.

As regards Platform Building, OPEN DEI will provide a reference architecture, a set of open source reference implementations and an Industrial Data Platform; in the framework of Large Scale Piloting it will provide a digital maturity model, a set of assessment methods and a migration journey benchmarking tool; in the field of Ecosystem Building it will implement an Innovation and Collaboration Platform, a pan-EU network of Industrial DIHs, an Industrial Skills catalogue and observatory; in the field of Standardisation it will deliver a cross-domain survey, a promotion and implementation plan and a strategic alliance with existing EU and International SDOs.

H2020 project - 2020 –2023

Most of Europe’s SMEs lag behind in data-driven innovation. To tackle this problem, the EU-funded EUHubs4Data project will build a European federation of Data Innovation Hubs based on existing key players in this area and connecting with data incubators and platforms, SME networks, AI communities, skills and training organisations and open data repositories. A European catalogue of data sources and federated data-driven services and solutions will be made accessible to European SMEs, start-ups and web entrepreneurs through the Data Innovation Hubs. Cross-border and cross-sector data-driven experimentation will be facilitated through data-sharing, as well as data- and service interoperability, becoming a reference instrument for growth in a global data economy and contributing to the creation of common European data spaces.

H2020 project - 2020 –2023

Artificial Intelligence, to become fully pervasive, needs resources at the edge of the network. The cloud can provide the processing power needed for big data, but edge computing is close to where data are produced and therefore crucial to their timely, flexible, and secure management. AI-SPRINT will define a framework for developing AI applications in computing continua, enabling a finely-tuned tradeoff between performance (e.g. in terms of end-to-end latency and throughput) and AI model accuracy, while providing security and privacy guarantees.
AI-SPRINT outcomes are: i) simplified programming models to reduce the steep learning curves in the development of AI software in computing continua; ii) highly specialized building blocks for distributed training, privacy preservation and advanced machine learning models, to shorten time-to-market for AI applications; iii) automated deployment and dynamic reconfiguration to decrease the cost of operating AI software. 
 

H2020 Project, 2018–2021

We are at the "eve" of a fundamental transition in 5G, and 5G EVE aims to create the foundations for a pervasive rollout of end-to-end 5G networks in Europe. 5G EVE supports this fundamental transition by offering vertical industries and all 5GPPP Phase 3 projects facilities to validate their network KPIs and services. 5G EVE aims to create synergies between a significant number of facilities that will ensure sustainability and impact in terms of exploitation. 5G EVE will impact standards, and has the potential and strategy to ensure the sustainability of the facility beyond the project lifetime, therefore becoming a cornerstone of the 5G PPP programme and beyond.

The 5G EVE end-to-end facility consists of the interconnection of four 5G site facilities (France, Spain, Italy, Greece), which have been selected because of their considerable previous work with vertical industries and standardisation bodies, on top of their 5G technology competences. The 5G EVE facility will enable experiments with heterogeneous access, including NR, licensed/unlicensed spectrum and advanced spectrum management, as well as mobile edge computing, backhaul and core/service technologies. It will also enable site interworking and multisite/domain/technology slicing/orchestration.

H2020 project - 2020 –2021

H-CLOUD leads coordination and support activities for the consolidation and growth of the Cloud Computing research and innovation community in Europe, bringing together innovators, policy makers, Cloud Computing research, industry and users into an open, participatory and sustainable forum. The H-CLOUD Forum will strengthen collaboration to address challenges and opportunities at research, technological, policy, standardisation and organisational level to unlock the potential of cloud computing for all European stakeholders.

H-CLOUD will provide a rich set of collaborative content, tools and actions to overcome fragmentation and increase collaboration in Europe and beyond, while aligning on a common direction to help creating a Cloud agenda for the future of Europe. To this purpose H-CLOUD will lead the definition of the Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda for Cloud Computing that will provide recommendations and strategies to guide the future of European Cloud services and their market regulations. This will encompass the creation of a comprehensive knowledge base, the H-CLOUD LANDSCAPE, including an online catalogue of stakeholders, initiatives, projects, businesses, policies, success stories and best practices that will be made accessible to all H-CLOUD FORUM participants.

Benchmarking the Digital Transformation of the Public Sector in European Countries
European Commission Framework Contract, 2005-2022

Since 2001, the EC's annual eGovernment Benchmark monitoring instrument has provided insight into the use of information and communications technologies in the public sector. It is an internationally recognised benchmark in the field of egovernment services of Member States. The highly collaborative approach between the EC and Member States has ensured the sharing of good practices and a significant improvement in egovernment services over the years. IDC4EU has been involved in the benchmarking of egovernment in Europe on behalf of DG Connect since 2005, first delivering pilot studies (with RSO) and then with Capgemini in the benchmarking framework, contributing substantially to the renewal of the methodological approach and to the design and implementation of mystery shopping. IDC was primarily responsible for the development of the eprocurement benchmarking methodology, first for the DG Information Society and then as an independent benchmark for DG Markt in 2011–2012.

The main objective is to provide a quantitative overview of the status of modernisation in the public sector in 35 countries and disseminate this to interested stakeholders and to the public in general. This involves data collection, workshops and reporting, aimed at supporting the monitoring of innovation in the public sector.

The eGovernment Benchmark framework provides each country under assessment with an ideal opportunity to determine its strengths and weaknesses, and relate these to its own egovernment innovation strategy. In this way, each country can gauge whether it is on track to achieve its goals. It enables countries to identify opportunities for improvement and look at ways to potentially reconsider policy decisions. The primary goal of the exercise should not be to score 100% across all indicators, but to use the tool and its outcomes to determine where follow-up action is required in the context of the national egovernment strategy. It is not a prize-winning competition, but an instrument to learn and improve.

Leveraging the power of location information and technologies to improve Public Services at Local Level

The project “ELISE Lot 1 - Leveraging the power of location information and technologies to improve Public Services at Local Level: An EU-wide Analysis” is part of a broader effort and reorientation of the JRC and Digital Economy Unit (JRC.B.6) in particular. It falls under the ISA Action ELISE: European Location Interoperability Solutions for e-Government.

Aim and expectations:

• To provide practical guidance, convincing value propositions, and a list of priorities for further policy action, which help to improve the quality and delivery of public services by the meaningful and innovative use of location data and technology at local and regional level.
• Conduct an in depth mapping and critical analysis of recent initiatives, emerging solutions and their possible impacts, thereby organically structuring the information available at local and regional level, and investigating new practices - together with their replicability and scalability potentials - and suggest possible future pathways for the evolution of public services in the EU.
   

Study on behalf of the European Commission DG Connect 

The study results have helped the European Commission to develop the service portfolio of the CEF (Connected Europe Facility) Automated Translation platform, aimed at informing potential policy development activities.

Lot 1 carried out an analysis of European language technologies (LTs) in terms of supply and demand and identified gaps, assessed the use of LTs by public services in the EU and in the individual Member States, and developed a business case for the CEF Automated Translation services by defining a CEF etranslation position and value proposition that considers the context of the European LT market/ecosystem

Lot 2 aimed to contribute to the further development of the Automated Translation "core service platform" towards an infrastructure for "full multilingual enablement (beyond simple translation) of online services linked to CEF DSIs". The specific objectives of the study were to:

• Gather the additional needs of CEF DSIs, public services and infrastructures linking to CEF DSIs and other services with cross-border/pan-European relevance on automated translation services (beyond machine translation alone)
• Analyse the range of services that could extend CEF Automated Translation, including how they could be connected and offered as part of or within CEF Automated Translation to its user base in a sustainable way
• Support CEF DSIs and related systems with a view to maximising their use of CEF Automated Translation services (to advise and provide technical assistance to CEF DSIs and connected systems on automated translation services available through the platform)

H2020 Project, 2018–2020

DataBench aims to design a benchmarking process to help European organisations develop Big Data technologies (BDTs) to constantly improve their performance by measuring their technology development against a set of business parameters. DataBench investigates existing Big Data benchmarking tools and projects, identifies the main gaps and provides a robust set of metrics to compare the technical results from those tools. The project addresses the gap in the current benchmarking community's activities by providing certifiable benchmarks and evaluation schemes for BDT performance.

The DataBench framework comprises a complete set of metrics for BDT assessment, including:

• Multiple analysis to assess the European and industrial significance of the BDT examined by the project
• The DataBench Toolbox to connect and evaluate external initiatives
• The DataBench Handbook to provide guidelines on how to use the project's results, framework and toolbox, with a description of metrics implementation and benchmarks.

H2020 Project, 2017–2019

The main objective of the e-SIDES Coordination and Support Action (CSA) is to complement the research on privacy-preserving Big Data technologies by analysing, mapping and clearly identifying the main societal and ethical challenges emerging from the adoption of Big Data technologies, conforming to the principles of responsible research and innovation.

Data-driven innovation is transforming society and the economy. Although there are potentially enormous economic and social benefits, this innovation also brings new challenges for individual and collective privacy and security, as well as democracy and participation.

e-SIDES will set up and organise a sustainable dialogue between industry, research and social actors, as well as networking with the main research and innovation actions and LSPs and other Framework Programme projects interested in these issues. It will investigate stakeholders' concerns and collect their input, framing the results in a clear conceptual framework showing the potential trade-offs between conflicting needs and providing a basis to validate privacy-preserving technologies. It will prepare and disseminate community-shared conclusions and recommendations highlighting the best way to ultimately build the confidence of citizens and businesses in Big Data and the data economy.

H2020 Project, 2017–2019

Global5G.org was established to provide a European-led contribution to the international vision of 5G networks, addressing a large set of requirements from different vertical industries.

Global5G.org plugs the gap in the effort to implement a European "5G PPP vision" in an international context, engaging all relevant stakeholders and with a specific focus on vertical markets, standardisation, and policy and regulation. As part of the project's work plan, a collaboration web platform will showcase and monitor EU and international initiatives and joint R&I programmes with regards to 5G capabilities, standardisation, verticals and related spectrum. Through its standardisation tracker, it will monitor standardisation efforts related to specific vertical industry requirements, driving implementation and sustainability for a successful 5G deployment.

Global5G.org also analyses the sustainability strategies and identifies new business models, taking into consideration private and public investments through pragmatic engagement drivers. It will also report on research findings on standardisation, assess the opportunities for market uptake with a close eye on the selected vertical markets and map them into the right stakeholder groups.

H2020 Project, 2017-2020

CREATE-IoT aimed to stimulate collaboration between IoT initiatives, foster the take-up of IoT in Europe, and support the development and growth of IoT ecosystems based on open technologies and platforms. This required synchronisation and alignment on strategic and operational terms through frequent, multidirectional exchanges between the various activities under the IoT Focus Areas (FAs). It also required cross-fertilisation of the various IoT Large Scale Pilots (LSPs) for technological and validation issues of common interest across the application domains and use cases.

The project fostered the exchange of information on the requirements for accompanying legal measures, development of common methodologies and KPIs for design, testing and validation, and for success and impact measurement, coordination of pilot activities and transfer to other pilot areas, facilitating access for IoT entrepreneurs/API developers/makers and SMEs, including a combination of ICT and initiatives for artists. CREATE-IoT built strong connections with Member States' initiatives and other initiatives, and transferred learning points to the broader IoT policy framework that includes contractual PPPs (e.g., Big Data, factories of the future, 5G infrastructure), joint technology initiatives (e.g., ECSEL), European innovation partnerships (e.g., on smart cities), as well as other FAs (e.g., on autonomous transport). It maintained a coordinated working relationship with U4IoT, focused on RRI-SSH (Responsible Research and Innovation — Social Sciences and Humanities).

H2020 Project, 2017–2018

Started in January 2017, HUB4NGI was the first Coordination and Support Action dedicated to transforming the Next-Generation Internet initiative into an increasingly dynamic, collaborative, vibrant and participatory research and innovation ecosystem. HUB4NGI aimed to offer a collaborative platform to effectively support and coordinate activities across the whole NGI context by combining knowledge, tools and processes to reach and engage top-notch internet researchers and innovators. IDC was responsible for defining a methodology to collect and assess the information in the NGI domain by defining the exact models and templates as well as a database structure to collect data. IDC actively contributed to the definition of procedures to analyse data as well as a KPI infrastructure to measure and assess the initiatives and resources available to stakeholders in the domain.

Key objectives for the project were to:

• Set out a vision for NGI, defining the research scope and priorities, building the community, identifying key players, etc.
• Develop an NGI road map and policy recommendations to help shape and define the 2025 vision
• Support the requirements of the Next-Generation Internet Experimentation for 2020–2025

Policy Efforts to Avoid Vendor Lock-In in Cloud Computing
Study on behalf of the European Commission DG Connect

The main objective of this study was to gather evidence on practices relating to switching of cloud service providers, with a specific focus on the barriers potentially preventing data portability and/or application portability, which may reduce users' choices, and the policy measures needed to overcome these barriers. The study provided practical and evidence-based recommendations supporting policy making aimed at facilitating the switching of cloud service providers by business and private users. It:

• Collected evidence on the issues related to portability when switching cloud service providers
• Provided empirical findings about the main causes of these issues and their suggested countermeasures, identifying good practices
• Organised the interaction with the community of cloud stakeholders
• Assessed measures to enable cloud service customers to ensure portability and enable providers to offer portability, including extending the new data portability right created by the GDPR to non-personal data and to all categories of users
• Identified, analysed and assessed the potential competitiveness, innovation and economic impacts on the development of the cloud market of the introduction of the mandatory right to data portability and mandatory right to application portability
• Collected feedback through a stakeholder workshop to validate the study's conclusions
• Drew up conclusions and provided practical guidance on the best ways to enable portability in the cloud services market
• Offered recommendations on regulatory and non-regulatory measures to avoid cloud user lock-in and enable the balanced development of the cloud computing market in Europe

Assessing the impacts and influence of the Open Data Incubator Europe
Impact Assessment Study for the Open Data Institute – 2017

IDC carried out an independent impact assessment for ODINE’s incubation programme to evaluate whether ad to what extent ODINE achieved its main objective to attract and fund a group of innovative digital companies with original business ideas about Open Data and accelerate their time to market and chances of success. The assessment was carried out in March-April 2017 and was based on data collection through an independent survey of the 57 funded companies and 10 non-funded companies, the information published by the companies, ODINE’s databases and documents repositories. IDC developed a forecast model estimating potential revenues, jobs created and the number of customers of these companies to 2020, under a main and a counterfactual scenario. The results were compared with the impact assessment of the FIWARE Accelerator Programme, which funded over 1000 startups and SMEs, carried out by IDC in 2014-16.

Through this impact assessment, IDC provided answers to these key research questions:

• What impact has ODINE had on company growth?
• How successful were the business plans of ODINE’s participants?
• What is the benefit of open data to participant businesses?