Estimating the financial costs of the EOSC Federation

Questionnaire for the EOSC Candidate Nodes

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is rapidly moving towards implementation, with the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation involving the first thirteen EOSC Candidate Nodes underway. To effectively move towards a sustainable financing for EOSC post-2027, the EOSC Tripartite Governance aims to estimate the financial needs of EOSC – present, and future.

We would like to ask for your assistance as EOSC Candidate Nodes, in order to achieve a more evidence-based estimate of these costs.

In particular, we would like to ask you to fill in and submit the below questionnaire regarding your current and foreseen/projected additional costs, or cost savings, related to your participation in the EOSC Federation.

We are mindful that replies may mainly be reasonable estimates based on your involvement in the build-up so far, given that your current participation is purely voluntary and that the build-up of the EOSC Federation is at an early and still exploratory stage.

Nevertheless, your replies will be key input towards determining the investments that will need to be addressed by national and EU resources.

Practical information regarding the questionnaire:

• Your participation is voluntary. You may reply to all or part of the questions.
• We understand your responses will be on a best-guess basis. They are by any means non-binding. They will not be published and will be used only by the EOSC Tripartite Governance for the purposes of this exercise, in an aggregated manner wherever possible.
• Please feel free to point out any cost elements that are missing or any other feedback/comments you may have in relation to this exercise.

QUESTIONNAIRE
The questionnaire will close on Monday, 26 May 2025 (23:59 CEST)

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Name *

First

Last

Email *

Name of the Candidate Node responding *SelectBBMRI ERICCERNCNR (Blue-Cloud 2026)CNRS (Data Terra)CSC – IT Center for ScienceCVTI SREOSC EU NodeESRF (PaNOSC)EUDATFoundation ICSCLSRN (Life Science Research Node representing ELIXIR, EMBL, Euro-BioImaging and Instruct-ERIC)NCNNFDISURF

For all below questions please provide cost estimates or ranges of costs in terms of EUR per year and/or FTE per year, unless explicitly asked otherwise.

Planning, Construction and Operational Costs of an EOSC Node

• You may exclude costs for federating capabilities and cost-intensive services in questions 1 to 3, as they are explicitly asked for in questions 4 and 5.

• External funding sources may include any (regional, national, European, EOSC Federation, etc.) external funding sources.

• The part of the costs reported in questions “i” and “ii” shall (ideally) sum up to 100%.

1. Planning and design

a. What is the estimate of the total costs associated with the design phase of your Node?

i) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by your organisation’s/ consortium’s internal/operational budget?

ii) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by external funding sources?

2. Construction and development

a. What is the estimate of the total costs associated with the prototyping of the infrastructure and initial services of your candidate Node?

i) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by your organisation’s/ consortium’s internal/operational budget?

ii) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by external funding sources?

b. What is your estimate/expectation of the scaling of these costs in the next 5 years?

3. Operations

a. What is your estimate of the total cost for operating your Node in the EOSC Federation?

i) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by your organisation’s/ consortium’s internal/operational budget?

ii) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by external funding sources?

b. What is your estimate/expectation of the scaling of these costs in the next 5 years?

Costs related to federating capabilities and provision of cost-intensive services

4. Federating capabilities

a. If applicable, what are the estimated costs for planning/design, construction/development and operation of the federating capabilities that you plan to contribute to (EOSC AAI, EOSC catalogue, etc)?

i) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by your organisation’s/ consortium’s internal/operational budget?

ii) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by external funding sources?

b. Do you foresee cost savings for your organization/consortium by participating in the EOSC federating capabilities? If yes, what is the estimate of these cost savings?

5. Cost-intensive services

a. Do you intend to make available cost-intensive services (e.g. storage and compute) to EOSC users other than those of your Node?

b) If yes, what are the estimated costs for planning/design, construction/ development and operation/provision of these cost-intensive services to EOSC users other than those of your Node?

i) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by your organisation’s/ consortium’s internal/operational budget?

covered scaling organisation’s/

ii) What part of these costs is expected to be covered by external funding sources?

c. If yes, would you consider participating in a Federation-wide system of allocation of such cost-intensive services to EOSC users, e.g. based on the current credit-based system of the EU Node?

d. If yes, would you consider participating in a cost-sharing model of cost-intensive services spanning all or several Nodes an option?

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