The European Cloud Initiative implementation encompasses different elements and will require a solid governance setup. A cornerstone of this governance is a Joint Undertaking, planned to start activities in 2019. HPC-GIG proposes intelligence gathering services from the European HPC stakeholders to this future ‘HPC Governance’ - HPCG. It aims to facilitate a timely start of its operations, transparently and non-intrusively leveraging the HPC community know-how, organised with enough flexibility to align project activities with the programme schedule and needs during its ramp-up phase, and deliver timely and useful input to the HPCG. For this purpose the project will: - establish an effective and responsive communication channel with the HPC Governance; - engage all relevant stakeholders in the HPC and data ecosystem via dynamically managed ad hoc task forces; - develop knowledge registries and consolidate networks of expertise which may already exist; - link national and pan-European activities in the field, involving users, implementers and funders participating in the European HPC and Big Data activities; - organise workshops for stakeholder groups and/or participating in already-existing strategic HPC events; - create visibility and position the project within the European HPC and data ecosystem. The project partners are Europe’s reference players in the main areas of concern: (a) PRACE (Project Coordinator): provider of world-class HPC for scientific and industrial research; (b) ETP4HPC: industry-led think tank of European HPC technology stakeholders; (c) GEANT: the leading European collaboration providing advanced network, infrastructure and services for research and education. The project partners are very active stakeholders interested in reaching the ECI objectives. Moreover, their in-depth knowledge of the field and the scope of their contacts will facilitate the involvement of users, implementers and funders from the European HPC ecosysstem.

The Open Cloud for Research Environments consortium combines the expertise of four partners to enable access and drive the adoption and use of commercial digital services by the European research community. Essential for interdisciplinary research, these services include: • Commodity type commercial digital services, such as: • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), providing compute, storage, network and related services, and a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications as a public cloud service. • Software as a Service (SaaS), an on-demand software licensing and delivery model in which software is used by the customer on a subscription basis and is hosted by the supplier as a public cloud service. File storage (sync and share), online collaboration, simulation and virtualisation tools are example services. • Secure Earth Observation commercial services, which make use of the Copernicus Data and Information Access Services (DIAS). After gathering user requirements, the OCRE will manage the adoption funds and buy resources from the selected suppliers (OCRE will act as customer) and make cloud resources available to institutions. Such a delivery vehicle is effective and efficient for the supply as well as the demand side. Service adoption is the key focus of this work. A legal and technical mechanism (The OCRE Business Management Platform) will be created to integrate a range of these commercial services into the EOSC hub in order to make them more easily available to researchers.

The NGI_Trust project aims to support the development of a human-centric Internet. by developing a stronger European ecosystem of researchers, innovators and technology developers in the field of privacy and trust enhancing technologies. NGI_TRUST will run two rounds of open calls in order to select and providing financial support to the best projects submitted by third parties in a competitive manner. The project has four overall objectives 1: Reinforce, structure and develop the community of researchers, innovators and technology developers in the field of privacy and trust enhancing technologies 2: Build on the state of the art in privacy and trust enhancing technologies by focusing support for third-party prheir personal data, attributes and information 3: Improve user trust and acceptance of emerging technologies by focusing on applications and solutions that develop a more open, robust and dependable Internet and strengthen Internet Governance 4: Foster the exploitation and commercialisation of the results of selected third-party projects through a tailored process of coaching and mentoring. The NGI_Trust project will use the open calls approach to engage, in parallel, with different players, working at various technology readiness levels (TRL), to explore topics that are critical to build the NGI; and are also a core expertise of the consortium partners. The project will be supported by an advisory board of experts with proven expertise in privacy and regulations, security, identity management, encryption, network protocols, IoT and distributed ledgers (i.e. blockchain). During the proposal preparation work has been done with the advisory board to prepare the call topics. The consortium provides an ideal mix of expertise in management of research and innovation policies, technical expertise in the domain, business coaching and mentoring of Internet technology firms. We aim to use the available funds from the call to leverage additional matching funds.

Under the new 72-month GN5 Framework Partnership Agreement in Horizon Europe (GN5-FPA), this proposal responds to Horizon Europe Call HORIZON-INFRA-2021-NET-01-SGA-2 (Work Programme ’21-22 Other Actions: 2. SGA for investments on International connectivity and collaboration), received 1 February 2022. GN5-IC1 sets out a new plan and implementation for the first phase of a new intercontinental connectivity investment programme, meeting the huge growth in network capacity demands and leading the network through a paradigm shift in the digital science and computational infrastructures in the next 10 to 15 years. It builds on the successful and relevant experience in planning and procuring and introducing into operation direct intercontinental links, such as BELLA S1, as well as a number of other existing bilateral and reciprocal arrangements for operational links negotiated with other intercontinental partners. This project will help ensure sufficient capacity is put in place through procurements and implementations of links during the project term or through setting a roadmap for future investments beyond this timeframe. The GÉANT Consortium has a long established and successful track record in securing long-term intercontinental network connectivity, interconnecting with an increasing number of gateways in the network, in co-ordination with global peers. Applying proven skills and expertise, GÉANT is well placed to maximise the value of the links to be procured, with innovative contracts and to secure reciprocal global peering contributions to increase the impact of the resources available in GN5-IC1.

EInfraCentral's mission is to ensure that by 2020 a broader/ more varied set of users (including industry) benefits from European infrastructures. A common approach to defining and monitoring e-infrastructures services will increase their uptake. It will also enhance understanding of where improvement can be made in delivering services. The challenge is to shift towards an e-Infrastructure ''market place'' to initiate new service offerings and to engage with a broader set of users and needs. This will be achieved through an exchange of know-how between e-infrastructures consultations with a broad range of existing or potential users. EInfraCentral will pursue 3 specific objectives: 1. Structure an open and guided discussion between e-infrastructures to consensually define a common service catalogue 2. Develop a one-stop shop portal for users to browse the service catalogue and enhance the monitoring of key performance indicators that focus on availability and quality of services and user satisfaction 3. Draw policy lessons for a future European e-infrastructure market place as an extension of the common service catalogue and portal (incorporating a larger number of e-infrastructures). Key highlights of the proposal are: 1.A multidisciplinary team combining technical knowledge & insights from the e-infrastructure community with independent expertise in community building consultation, policy and data mapping and monitoring 2. A co-design process that will involve funders, the e-research infrastructure community and a representative user group (incl. SMEs) 3. On-going user interaction will guide the design and development of the eInfraCentral portal (as the main entry point to European e-infrastructures services) in two phases: a prototype with a first set of services and a full release with a KPI dashboard 4. Reinforce collaboration between e-infrastructures and optimise access to and increase uptake of e-infrastructures services by end users.