The European Commission, the EOSC Association, and the Member States representatives of the EOSC Steering Board have gathered on 16–17 December on the very first event of the so-called EOSC Tripartite Structure. Over 70 invited participants contributed actively to the success of this first of its kind meeting opened by Jean-Eric Paquet, the Director-General for the Research and Innovation Directorate-General of the European Commission, by Peter Volasko, Head of Science Division, Science Directorate at the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, and representing the Slovenian Presidency, and Karel Luyben, President of the EOSC Association.
During the first day, the attendees reviewed the advances of the EOSC implementation, the implications on national policies, and the impact on the research ecosystem in Europe. Good examples of EOSC practice at European, national, and organisational levels were presented by Niklas Blomberg from ELIXIR, York Sure-Vetter from the German National Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and Laura Perini from the Italian Computing and Data Infrastructure (ICDI).
On the second day, the participants worked out key concepts of the initiative with a view to advance a common glossary of EOSC terms for general use. Typical concepts included “EOSC Readiness’, “EOSC Ecosystem”, “EOSC Users”, ”EOSC Interoperability” as well as “Incentives, rewards and recognition”. In the next step, the participants discussed on the associated challenges and ways to overcome them. Overall, the event allowed identifying a series of priorities and strategic orientations for the EOSC evolution in the coming years.
The Tripartite Event was concluded by paving the way. In 2021 many of the activities of the EOSC partners were dominated by putting in place the elements of the EOSC governance, like the EOSC Association and the EOSC Steering Board and its subgroups, and by rolling out the first EOSC calls of the Horizon Europe programme. Volker Beckmann (EOSC-SB), Michel Schouppe (EC), and Karel Luyben (EOSC-A) unanimously agreed that with the EOSC Tripartite Structure and the Horizon Europe programme in place, the focus shall now be fully on the synergetic implementation of the EOSC at the European, national, and institutional levels. For 2022 important items are: the deployment of a minimum viable EOSC and its added value; the deployment of one monitoring system; and the alignment of policies as a tripartite.
The EOSC partnership is going to be the backbone of these developments, and future tripartite events will help to exchange views and to advance the EOSC implementation among the partners.
>> More information about the EOSC Tripartite Structure and the outcome of this first event
