[I4trust] Fwd: IMPORTANT: Insights from Open Call 1 and concrete action for your approval

Juanjo Hierro juanjose.hierro at fiware.org
Wed Sep 29 15:16:54 CEST 2021


Hi,

   Forgot to comment.   What I have forwarded to you was a draft message 
I had prepared.  The mail has not been sent yet to the PO.

   As you see, the PO expressed her concerns regarding the one2one meetings.

   @Rosa: may you please review the draft message and confirm you would 
agree with the response given to this particular point? Feel free to 
amend in order to get a message that is enough precise and not risky.

   Cheers,

   Juanjo

On 29/9/21 15:14, Juanjo Hierro wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
>   Unfortunately, the PO has responded negatively to our request to 
> relax the rule that was limiting the funding of DIHs to 18 K€ in total.
>
>   Looking towards preparation of the review of the project, we should 
> not forget to run a survey with DIHs that will summit to get a clear 
> statement from them that the rule established prevented them to 
> prepare multiple applications.  This way, we will be able to place 
> that information in an objective manner in front of the PO and 
> reviewers and justify the decision to relax the rule for the second 
> open call.
>
>   We will have now to double our efforts towards identification of new 
> DIHs and helping SMEs willing to submit an application to find a DIH 
> they can partner with.
>
>   Cheers,
>
> Document
> Juanjo Hierro
> Chief Technology Officer
> juanjose.hierro at fiware.org <mailto:juanjose.hierro at fiware.org>
> www.linkedin.com/in/jhierro <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhierro>
> Twitter: @fiware <https://twitter.com/fiware> @JuanjoHierro 
> <https://twitter.com/JuanjoHierro>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: 	Re: IMPORTANT: Insights from Open Call 1 and concrete action 
> for your approval
> Date: 	Wed, 29 Sep 2021 15:08:54 +0200
> From: 	Juanjo Hierro <juanjose.hierro at fiware.org>
> To: 	NAGY Annamaria <Annamaria.NAGY at ec.europa.eu>
> CC: 	cnect-h2020-951975 at ec.europa.eu <cnect-h2020-951975 at ec.europa.eu>
>
>
>
> Dear Annamaria,
>
>   Ok.  This means that most (if not all) the DIHs will prepare one 
> application which will mean less applications but we'll have to live 
> with it, I guess.
>
>   With regards to the point on "one2one meetings" just let you know we 
> have offered these meetings to all and we have asked them to formulate 
> their questions in advance so that we can prepare responses that then 
> can be shared with others, precisely following the principle that 
> guidance should be available to all applicants in an equally and fair 
> manner.
>
>   Best regards,
>
>   Juanjo
>
>
> On 28/9/21 17:24, NAGY Annamaria wrote:
>>
>> Dear Juanjo,
>>
>> In principal, I do not support any changes to an already published 
>> call. This should be done only exceptionally. There is a big change 
>> already done, i.e. the extension of deadline. Every time we change an 
>> ongoing call, there is a risk that transparency and equal treatment 
>> would be impaired.
>>
>> Regarding the limit of funding for DIHs, the current Guide for 
>> Applicants states that funding received from any other similar 
>> sources (e.g. other DT-ICT-05 projects) would be counted into the EUR 
>> 60K limit. So I don’t see the point in raising the 18K limit for DIHs 
>> to 40K instead. The participation in other experiments without 
>> funding is already available for them as well.
>>
>> Also, I don’t see how this planned raise in funding can help 
>> geographical distribution either. Instead, it would be desireable to 
>> make effort to involve DIHs from under-represented EU member states, 
>> to mobilize them as well. Then the applications would have an ideal 
>> geographical balance.
>>
>> I have a problem with the offered “one2one meetings to applicants” as 
>> well. This goes against equal treatment. Basically, the 
>> guidance/advice you give to applicant X should be available to all 
>> the rest of applicants, too.
>>
>> I would not change the rules at this point, but rather collect all 
>> the lessons learnt and use them when drafting the call documentation 
>> for the next open call.
>>
>> Many thanks and best regards,
>>
>> Annamaria
>>
>> *From:*Juanjo Hierro <juanjose.hierro at fiware.org>
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 28, 2021 10:27 AM
>> *To:* NAGY Annamaria (CNECT) <Annamaria.NAGY at ec.europa.eu>
>> *Cc:* CNECT H2020 951975 I4TRUST <cnect-h2020-951975 at ec.europa.eu>
>> *Subject:* Re: IMPORTANT: Insights from Open Call 1 and concrete 
>> action for your approval
>>
>> Dear Annamaria,
>>
>>   May you give us the approval for implementing the change proposed 
>> in my last mail regarding the Open Call ?
>>
>>   As explained, we believe this may boost the number of applications.
>>
>>   Thanks in advance,
>>
>>   Juanjo
>>
>> On 24/9/21 13:55, Juanjo Hierro wrote:
>>
>>     Dear Annamaria,
>>
>>       As mentioned in my previous mail, figures regarding responses
>>     to the first i4Trust Open Call are improving.  Current statistics
>>     are:
>>
>>     ·115 applicants registered in the open call management platform
>>     (this is not really a good indicator because we know many
>>     organizations will just register to check the complexity of the
>>     process or just for curiosity)
>>
>>     ·29 applications already include basic information (this starts
>>     to be promising)
>>
>>     ·20 applications have a consortium of DIH and SMEs already formed
>>     (we expect that they will most likely submit their application)
>>
>>     ·19 applications include already a draft description of their
>>     experiment (these are indeed applications we expect will be
>>     submitted)
>>
>>       Several applicants indeed expressed they were glad with the
>>     extension of the call and expressed their interest to further
>>     discuss how they could improve their applications.  For this
>>     purpose, a number of actions have been planned to make sure that
>>     consortium which have started to work in the proposal will
>>     finalize their process.  For example:
>>
>>     ·we have offered one2one meetings to applicants in order to solve
>>     specific questions they may have
>>
>>     ·we will organize a webinar on October 7th to provide hints on
>>     design of experiments and solve general doubts
>>
>>       We are also going to perform a campaign towards DIHs within the
>>     S3 Catalogue which have not jet joined the i4Trust Community in
>>     order to promote the Open Call, leveraging the recent
>>     announcement about the Data Spaces Business Alliance which we
>>     hope may help to raise their interest.
>>
>>       However, one of the most valuable insights we have obtained
>>     through direct feedback from DIHs and SMEs is that one
>>     requirement we had established in the Open Call was creating too
>>     high barriers for submission.   Actually, we had established that
>>     DIHs would be funded a maximum of 18 K€ per proposal *AND* they
>>     can only be funded up to 18 K€ in all the proposals they are
>>     included (note that consortiums are funded between 72 K€ and 120
>>     K€ depending on the number of SMEs involved).   Since the each
>>     consortium is required to bring a DIH, we are facing these two
>>     scenarios that are impacting the number of proposals we may receive:
>>
>>     ·Since 18 K€ is already not a large funding and DIHs are expected
>>     to require it for covering their support in a given experiment,
>>     DIHs are taking the option of submitting only one proposal.  This
>>     despite they are receiving request from SMEs of their community
>>     that are interested in the call.  DIHs are telling those SMEs:
>>     "sorry, we will be submitting just one proposal, therefore we'll
>>     have to wait for the 2nd Open Call".
>>
>>     ·Since having a DIH in the consortium is a must requirement, SMEs
>>     that got attracted by the Open Call and have a nice experiment in
>>     mind, have to search for a DIH they may integrate in their
>>     consortium.   However, they are approaching DIHs they see part of
>>     the i4Trust Community that may be also connected to their region
>>     and, since they are telling them, "sorry, we are already booked"
>>     and they cannot find easily another DIH in their region, they
>>     finally give up
>>
>>       This is not speculation but we got very concrete testimonies/cases.
>>
>>       After this analysis, the i4Trust partners have come to the
>>     conclusion that we could overcome this problem just by relaxing a
>>     bit the requirements on DIHs as follows: *keep the funding of a
>>     DIH per proposal limited to 18 K€, but allow them to get involved
>>     in more than one selected proposal, provided that the maximum
>>     funding they will gather among all experiments selected where hey
>>     are involved is limited to 40 K€ which can be negotiated at the
>>     negotiation phase* (that is, if they are involved in three
>>     experiments that get selected, and placed 18 K€ of funding in
>>     each, they will come with a proposal to adjust their funding,
>>     based on synergies they can bring, so that the overall funding
>>     gets limited to 40 K€)
>>
>>       With this approach, we will make sure that many DIHs will
>>     support creation of consortium for two experiments, perhaps some
>>     of them even up to 3 or 4.
>>
>>       Note that, at the end of the date, one criteria for final
>>     selection of experiments that may have very similar scoring in
>>     terms of excellence, implementation and impact will be
>>     geographically distribution, therefore we believe that
>>     introduction of this change in the requirements will not mean in
>>     practice that out of the 16 experiments to be selected we will
>>     have only 6 DIHs.   At the end, we can expect they would be
>>     higher number of DIHs for sure. However, we will create
>>     incentives for submitting more applications, which willl turn
>>     into more competition, which will lead in better quality of
>>     selected experiments.
>>
>>       Would you agree with relaxing the rule as described (in blue
>>     bold above)?
>>
>>       Looking forward your feedback and thanks in advance for a quick
>>     response,
>>
>>     -- 
>>
>>     *Juanjo Hierro*
>>
>>     Chief Technology Officer
>>
>>     juanjose.hierro at fiware.org <mailto:juanjose.hierro at fiware.org>
>>
>>     www.linkedin.com/in/jhierro
>>     <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.linkedin.com/in/jhierro__;!!DOxrgLBm!TiRVJicOhqs8A_B6wYhSBVPitv7W1PDyb-NA2FFtIF9uRJeViTZHw9DL98L0GuNG7GUF9Yw$>
>>
>>     Twitter: @fiware
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>>     @JuanjoHierro
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>>
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