Sometimes one is so snowed under with work, with tasks piling up and documents needing to be written, that the willingness to communicate weakens significantly. This is when one must take paper and pencil – read keyboard – in hand and give an update.
We are in a situation like this now with the EOSC Executive Board. As you know, the mandate for the EOSC Governance ends on 31 December 2020. Until then, we are tasked to have the new governance structure in place. We hope that this structure will be based on a European Partnership Agreement for EOSC under Horizon Europe and we are working full steam ahead towards this objective. This means that we are working on the finalisation of the Partnership Proposal document for EOSC, which is an iterative process between the EOSC Executive and Governance Boards supported by the EC and at the same time establishing a legal entity for EOSC which would – towards the end of the year – be ready to sign such European Partnership Agreement with the EC. The WG Sustainability and specifically the TF on Legal Entities within the WG Sustainability is doing a stellar job supporting the decision-process in the EOSC Governance. So, this is one element we are working on.
A consequence of establishing a European Partnership Agreement for EOSC and the legal entity is that the next step is to develop a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for this partnership. The SRIA then feeds into the work programmes which will define future projects and funding under Horizon Europe. So, this is another document that we are developing. Clearly, there is a need for consultation on this document, so we are currently aiming at getting the draft SRIA out for open consultation by June 2020.
This then goes hand in hand with the last item I would like to mention today, which is the events coming up – there are three events planned: we will have an EOSC Executive Board Consultation Day on 18 May 2020 in Karlsruhe in collaboration with the EOSC-hub Week. This will be followed by the EOSC Symposium, which will take place in the second part of October in Berlin, and finally, we will have the closing event of the first phase of EOSC, which will launch the second phase with a new EOSC Governance in early December 2020, again in Berlin.
And let’s not forget, how else to get involved with us: There is quite a lot of work done by the EOSC WGs which is now out for consultation – you can find links to current work in progress on the EOSC Secretariat Liaison Platform.
As always, thanks for reading!
