The 10 cycles of Open Calls will cover key ICT standardisation priority areas with further focus on specific vertical sectors. The 1st Call  topics follow the priority areas outlined in the 2018 Rolling Plan for ICT Standardisation.

The 2018 Rolling Plan for ICT standardisation takes a unique look at standardisation activities in the field of ICT (information and communication technologies) by linking them to EU legislation and policies. Each year the plan is extended and 2018 sees the addition of blockchain and distributed digital ledger technologies, and regulatory technology. Source / To find out more visit: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/policy/ict-standardisation_en

View below the outline of the priority topics for the 1st Open Call. Note that proposals need to closely adhere to one or more of the topics identified.

StandICT.eu will run 10 Open Call cycles. Each call will be open for 60 days and will be followed by a 30 days evaluation period.

The 1st Call timing: 

• Launch: 30th March 2018
• Deadline: 29th May 2018, midnight CET
• Evaluation: The proposals evaluation will be done by a pool of independent evaluators, the estimated duration will be of 30 days. 
• Notification: Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their applications by the 28th of June 2018. 

Successful applicants will be contacted for contract signing and funding. 

Potential applicants are standardisation specialists, defined as professionals with proven expertise and experience in standardisation activities e.g. previous contributions to standards developments, participation in various SDO groups working, previous or current chairs etc in the respective priority area.

The StandICT.eu Calls are open to applicants from both public and private sectors in EEA member countries and Switzerland, industry and service companies including SMEs and start-ups, academia and research, and national and European associations, including NGOs representing consumers interests.

In particular, the target of StandICT.eu open calls are European Experts who:

• have profound knowledge in one of the priority areas supported by the open calls;
• have experience regarding developments of standards, e.g., in SDOs, in community organisations like Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC), in groups set-up by the EC like C-SIG or AIOTI, or when creating documentation in open source developments;
• are individuals or natural persons residing in the European Member States and Associate Countries;
• are not receiving support from other instruments (PPPs, EU or national R&I projects) for the proposed activities, and are not being funded from other sources for an identical activity.

In order to be eligible to apply for this grant, applicants must reside/work in Europe. More information is provided under the Expert Profile block. 

The proposals will also have to clearly demonstrate:

• Added value to existing SDO activities;
• Impact of work on European interests and the standard in question;
• Expertise of the applicant in the respective priority area;
• Expertise of the applicant in standardisation, e.g. previous contributions to standards developments, participation in other groups working on architectures, APIs, guidelines in the respective priority area.

Evaluations (for each proposal) will be performed using the following 4-criteria principle (score 1 to 10):

• Criterion 1: Soundness of the proposal and foreseen impact on European strategy (30%);
• Criterion 2: Technical excellence & adherence to the standardisation requirements and SDO activities (30%);
• Criterion 3: Experience and qualifications of the applicant (20%);
• Criterion 4: Economics of the proposal (20%)

The proposals final scoring and the ranking final score will be automatically determined by averaging scores provided by the 3 independent evaluators.