1ST OPEN CALL
The EC funded EUHubs4Data project has allocated 5.8M Euros to provide support to third parties to undertake up a set of data driven cross-border experiments through three rounds of open calls.
We are inviting SMEs (including start-ups) and groups of web entrepreneurs to propose experiments that make use of the EUHubsData federated catalgogue of data-driven services and datasets for the development of innovative products or advanced services.
Call closed.
1. GENERAL INFORMATION
600.000€
TOTAL CALL BUDGET
10
GRANTED PROPOSAL
60.000€
FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION PER BENEFICiARY
SERVICES & DATASETS
FEDERATED CATALOGUES OF DATA-DRIVEN SERVICES AND DATSETS
70.000€
DIH SUPPORT VALUE PER EXPERIMENT
08/02/2021
CLOSING DATE 1ST OPEN CALL
MAY 2021
START OF THE EXPERIMENTS
9 MONTHS
DURATION OF THE EXPERIMENTS
2. CALL DOCUMENTATION
3. WHAT IS IN FOR YOU?
Access to the latest developments on Data Analytics and advanced assets on Big Data.
Technical & business coaching and continuous follow-up support by Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) valued up to 70.000€ per experiment
- 60.000€ financial support
- Visibility and promotion.
- Exploitation plan
4. WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
Experiments that make use of the services included in the federated catalogue, proposing combinations of them for the development of innovative products or advanced services.
- Involve, at least, two services included in the federated catalogue provided by, at least, two different DIHs.
- Contribute to the specific challenges set up by one (or several) of the European Data Spaces presented within the framework of the European Data Strategy.
- Achieve Key Exploitable Results (KER) that could be delivered to market in the form of innovative data driven product or service.”
5. WHO CAN APPLY?
Individual SME legally established in an eligible country.
Group of individuals legally established in an elegible country.
Detailed eligibility criteria can be found in the Guidelines for Applicants.
6. HOW TO APPLY?
1stOpenCall
1ST OPEN CALL WEBINAR
EUHubs4Data have organized two informative webinars (18th Dec 2020 and 14th Jan 2021) to explain in detail the most relevant aspects about the open call, the scope of experiments and the evaluation. You can access here the video of the webinar and the slides used during the presentation.
Daniel Alonso
Artificial Intelligence & Big Data Partnerships Driver (Instituto Tecnológico de Informática)
Jorge Lorente Giner
R&D Project Consultant (Zabala Innovation Consulting S.A.)
FAQS
ABOUT EUHUBS4DATA
What is EUHubs4Data?
EUHubs4Data is an Innovation Action project co-funded by the European Union. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (call DT-ICT-05-2020 Big Data Innovation Hubs) under Grant Agreement No 951771.
EUHubs4Data was launched in September 2020 to create the European reference for Big Data experimentation and innovation, leveraging the achievements of relevant European initiatives on Big Data, linking all of them in a single ecosystem, composing a whole catalogue of data sources and datasets, services, and models, and providing a one-stop-shop that ensures that European companies at any level could easily access the economic opportunities offered by Big Data.
How can EUHubs4Data help me?
How does EUHubs4Data work?
So, are you financing my initiative?
Your experiment could be financed if you are selected in any of the EUHubs4Data calls. Conditions are found in the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
A selected experiment will be funded with 60k Euros (flat rate). DIHs whose services are included in the experiment will provide technical support for the beneficiaries in the use of the federated services and access to datasets.
What are the services for the selected experiments?
EUHubs4Data offers, through the federated catalogue, different services to the beneficiaries, provided by the DIHs composing the federation. This catalogue includes ecosystem building, technology provision, business development, maturity assessment and skills, and technical services covering the data value chain, as well as access to different private datasets.
Check section 3.3 “Offering” of the “Guidelines for Applicants” for further information, and the corresponding section of EUHubs4Data webpage (https://euhubs4data.eu/services/).
What kind of experiments are you looking for?
The objective of the experiments is that SMEs, start-ups or groups of web entrepreneurs make use of the services included in the federated catalogue, as well as the datasets, for the development of innovative products and solutions, or substantial improvement of existing ones, bringing them closer to the market. Aligned with this global objective, experiments are expected to:
- Involve at least, two data driven services from the EUHubs4Data federated catalogue, provided, at least, by two different DIHs.
- Make use of the datasets included in the federated catalogue, and, if possible, generate additional ones during the execution of the experiment.
- Apply these federated services and datasets to solve specific problems, overcome barriers or achieve challenges that cannot be attained (or at least in a much more difficult way) without the use of those services, in relevant sectors of the European economy.
- Achieve specific KPIs in terms of data driven innovation and fitness to market.
- Achieve Key Exploitable Results (KER) that could be delivered to market in the form of an innovative data driven product or service.
Where does the funding come from?
Is there any support for applicants without a selected idea?
How does the funding mechanism work?
The aid provided is relying on a cascade-funding scheme involving H2020 funds. The scheme is based on a Grant Agreement signed by the European Commission and the EUHubs4Data Consortium partners. The Consortium partners as such receive the H2020 funds, part of which will be transferred in the form of Financial Support to Third Parties to the selected beneficiaries in the open calls, and based on the rules and regulations explained in the “Guidelines for Applicants” available at our website.
What if I secure funds from other national or regional authorities for the same project?
The funds of the project come from the H2020 Programme. This means its regulation will apply to the funds. If you get additional public funding from other entities, it will be your responsibility to assure the compatibleness of the different sources of funding.
Besides this, remember that double funding with EUHubs4Data is not allowed. The work you plan to carry out as part of your EUHubs4Data experiment cannot receive double funding. Synergies with other sources of funding are welcome as long as the grants are used for complementary tasks and not overlapping purposes.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Who is eligible in the calls?
The accepted applicants for EUHubs4Data open calls are SMEs (including start-ups) and group of individuals (web entrepreneurs):
- SME: Individual SME legally established in an eligible country as described below.
- Group of individuals: When there is not a constituted SME, the applicants could be a group between 2 to 4 individuals legally established in an eligible country (as described below) and with a written commitment to have set up a legally registered SME if their experiment reach the funds.
A SME will be considered as such if accomplishing with the Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and the SME user guide. As a summary, the criteria which define a SME are:
- Headcount in Annual Work Unit (AWU) less than 250.
- Annual turnover less or equal to €50 million or annual balance sheet total, less or equal to €43 million.
Only applicants legally established, and working, in the case of the individuals, in any of the following countries will be eligible:
- The Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions;
- The Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) linked to the Member States;
H2020 Associated countries: according to the updated list published by the EC at http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/3cpart/h2020-hi-list-ac_en.pdf
How do I apply?
The F6S platform is the entry point for all proposals at https://www.f6s.com/euhubs4data. Submissions received by any other channel will be automatically discarded.
Remember to read the “Guidelines for Applicants”to get all the information you need to apply successfully.
What type of experiment are you looking for? Which should be the goal of the experiment?
The main goal of the experiments is to make use of the services included in the federated catalogue, proposing combinations of them for the development of innovative products or advanced services.
To achieve the main aim, it is expected that experiments should:
- Involve, at least, two services included in the federated catalogue provided by, at least, two different DIHs.
- Contribute to the specific challenges set out by one (or several) of the European Data Spaces set out within the framework of the European Data Strategy.
- Achieve Key Exploitable Results (KER) that could be delivered to market in the form of innovative data driven product or service.
Read the section 3.1 of the “Guidelines for Applicants” for more detailed information.
How do I involve the EUHubs4Data offer within my experiment?
The EUHubs4Data consortium have published a federated catalogue provided by the different DIHs of the EUHubs4Data federation. The federated catalogue is divided in two different catalogues:
- A catalogue of data-driven services, from which the experiments should involve, at least, two services provided by, at least, two different DIHs.
- A catalogue of open datasets, where there is no indication/restriction of how to involve them in the experiment. Please be aware that private datasets are considered within the catalogue of data-driven services.
Therefore, to be eligible, applicants should propose an experiment that involve, at least two services provided by, at least, two different DIHs. It is not mandatory to use open datasets from the federated catalogue.
It is expected is that the experiment propose the use of a combination of services (coming from different DIHs) that complement each other, in order to benefit from a more advanced service not available in the individual offer of the DIHs. Therefore, eexperiments that use a larger combination of resources from the federated catalogue are welcome.
Can I involve external resources in my experiment?
As long as the experiment involve, at least, two resources from the EUHubs4Data federated catalogue (as described above), applicants can also bring additional resources in the form of external datasets for the execution of their experiment.
Additionally, the generation of new datasets within the experiment is highly encouraged by the EUHubs4Data and will be taken into account in the evaluation of the experiment.
Can I submit several experiments?
Yes, each applicant can submit up to two proposals per call for evaluation. In the case of a multiple submission by a SME or team, only the first two submitted through F6S platform (timestamp of the system) will enter our evaluation process, the rest being declared as non-eligible and will not be considered for evaluation in any case.
In the case of group of web entrepreneurs (individuals):
- The same individuals forming a team will be selected for funding only once, as in the case of an SME.
- Only the first two submitted proposals by the same individuals forming a team will be evaluated, as in the case of an SME.
- If an individual is taking part in several teams:
- The members of the other teams will be informed about the participation of an individual in multiple teams.
- The individuals participating in multiple teams will be requested to select only two proposals and will be removed from the others. This may affect the eligibility condition of a given proposal, if the number of individuals goes under 2.
Although two proposals will be accepted for evaluation, only one proposal can be accepted for funding per SME or team of individuals and per call.
What are your funding criteria?
The funding process is summarised in the following figure. First your application should accomplish the eligibility criteria. Then, your proposal will go through a remote evaluation carried out by external experts that will order the proposals by rank based on a the scored obtained on the evaluation criteria. Then the selection criteria will be applied to select the experiments proposed for funding.
For detailed information on the eligibility evaluation and selection criteria, see sections 2.4.1.2, 2.4.1.3 and 2.4.1.4 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
What are the deadlines for the Open Calls?
We will publish 3 Open Calls to be opened on December 2020, August 2021 and May 2022. Only official dates for the Open Call #1 are available:
- Call opening on 09/12/2020
- Deadline for submission via FS6 Platform 08/02/2021, 12:00 (noon) CET
There will not be deadline extensions unless a major problem, caused by EUHubs4Data and not by the proposers, makes the system unavailable.
Further information about the calendar of the Open Call #1 is available on the Guidelines for Applicants.
Are you sharing any information about my proposal?
Yes. A summary of the proposals and the participants’ information will be shared with the EC. Moreover, we will publish an Open Dataset with the beneficiaries of our open call including their basic information data and funding received in our project website.
All the information that will be made public is clearly indicated in the official documentation of the call. Unless you agree on that, no technical insights will be published anywhere.
When filling up the application, should I fill all the fields?
What happens if I do not upload the files asked in the application form?
We ask for 3 files: (1) “Declaration of Honour” signed by a company representative; (2) Commitment to set up a registered SME, whose template is available in the Annex 3 of the “sub-grant agreement template”; and (3) Table proposing a set of 3-5 technical KPIs for monitoring the progress and success of the project. Documents (1) and (3) are mandatory for all applicants. Document (2) is only mandatory in the case the applicants are a group of web entrepreneurs.
If the mandatory files are empty or incomplete, your proposal will be automatically discarded.
What if I need to change the answers to my application once submitted?
If the call deadline has not passed, you can submit a new version of the proposal if, for example, you discover an error or you need to change any answer in an eligible submitted proposal. For this purpose, you must request it to F6S team through opencall@euhubs4data.eu, who will open again the application form. Once opened, you will be able to modify all questions of your application form. Please be aware that once opened, you should send again the form, or it will not be evaluated. Once resubmitted, only the last version received before the call deadline will be considered in the evaluation.
When will I hear back regarding my application?
Applicant will receive a communication with the results of the first open call from 05/04/2021 to 09/04/2021. For more information about the calendar of the first call, see section 3.4 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
Can I apply to the 2nd or 3rd call if I was not selected in the 1st or 2nd Call?
Yes, resubmission is allowed. If your experiment does not reach the funding, you can try again in the next open calls.
Besides, even if you have funded an experiment, you can propose another experiment in the following calls. However, if a beneficiary with a selected experiment fails to justify the expected results according to the set of technical KPIs defined in the sub-grant agreement, the proposals submitted in the following calls will be declared as non-eligible. Besides, if the beneficiary has already a second experiment financed, the bad justification of a prior experiment will trigger the automatic cancellation of the funding for the second experiment.
How does a good team look like?
Question 32 asks for the CVs of up to 4 team members. Please make sure to include both technical and business profiles in your team to have a balanced and capable team.
Filling in Team Members #1 and #2 is mandatory. Filling in Team Members #3 and #4 is highly advisable.
Can companies from UK participate in the open call?
The Withdrawal Agreement provides for the implementation of Union programmes and activities committed under the MFF for the years 2014-2020 and previous financial perspectives. As a consequence, UK entities remain eligible for grants and procurement procedures as if the UK was a member state for the entirety of the Horizon 2020 framework programme and previous framework programmes. This also applies for to financial support to third parties according to Article 204 FR (cascading grants), and applies for the duration of H2020 projects.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Who is eligible in the calls?
The accepted applicants for EUHubs4Data open calls are SMEs (including start-ups) and group of individuals (web entrepreneurs):
- SME: Individual SME legally established in an eligible country as described below.
- Group of individuals: When there is not a constituted SME, the applicants could be a group between 2 to 4 individuals legally established in an eligible country (as described below) and with a written commitment to have set up a legally registered SME if their experiment reach the funds.
A SME will be considered as such if accomplishing with the Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and the SME user guide. As a summary, the criteria which define a SME are:
- Headcount in Annual Work Unit (AWU) less than 250.
- Annual turnover less or equal to €50 million or annual balance sheet total, less or equal to €43 million.
Only applicants legally established, and working, in the case of the individuals, in any of the following countries will be eligible:
- The Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions;
- The Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) linked to the Member States;
H2020 Associated countries: according to the updated list published by the EC at http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/3cpart/h2020-hi-list-ac_en.pdf
How do I apply?
The F6S platform is the entry point for all proposals at https://www.f6s.com/euhubs4data. Submissions received by any other channel will be automatically discarded.
Remember to read the “Guidelines for Applicants”to get all the information you need to apply successfully.
What type of experiment are you looking for? Which should be the goal of the experiment?
The main goal of the experiments is to make use of the services included in the federated catalogue, proposing combinations of them for the development of innovative products or advanced services.
To achieve the main aim, it is expected that experiments should:
- Involve, at least, two services included in the federated catalogue provided by, at least, two different DIHs.
- Contribute to the specific challenges set out by one (or several) of the European Data Spaces set out within the framework of the European Data Strategy.
- Achieve Key Exploitable Results (KER) that could be delivered to market in the form of innovative data driven product or service.
Read the section 3.1 of the “Guidelines for Applicants” for more detailed information.
How do I involve the EUHubs4Data offer within my experiment?
The EUHubs4Data consortium have published a federated catalogue provided by the different DIHs of the EUHubs4Data federation. The federated catalogue is divided in two different catalogues:
- A catalogue of data-driven services, from which the experiments should involve, at least, two services provided by, at least, two different DIHs.
- A catalogue of open datasets, where there is no indication/restriction of how to involve them in the experiment. Please be aware that private datasets are considered within the catalogue of data-driven services.
Therefore, to be eligible, applicants should propose an experiment that involve, at least two services provided by, at least, two different DIHs. It is not mandatory to use open datasets from the federated catalogue.
It is expected is that the experiment propose the use of a combination of services (coming from different DIHs) that complement each other, in order to benefit from a more advanced service not available in the individual offer of the DIHs. Therefore, eexperiments that use a larger combination of resources from the federated catalogue are welcome.
Can I involve external resources in my experiment?
As long as the experiment involve, at least, two resources from the EUHubs4Data federated catalogue (as described above), applicants can also bring additional resources in the form of external datasets for the execution of their experiment.
Additionally, the generation of new datasets within the experiment is highly encouraged by the EUHubs4Data and will be taken into account in the evaluation of the experiment.
Can I submit several experiments?
Yes, each applicant can submit up to two proposals per call for evaluation. In the case of a multiple submission by a SME or team, only the first two submitted through F6S platform (timestamp of the system) will enter our evaluation process, the rest being declared as non-eligible and will not be considered for evaluation in any case.
In the case of group of web entrepreneurs (individuals):
- The same individuals forming a team will be selected for funding only once, as in the case of an SME.
- Only the first two submitted proposals by the same individuals forming a team will be evaluated, as in the case of an SME.
- If an individual is taking part in several teams:
- The members of the other teams will be informed about the participation of an individual in multiple teams.
- The individuals participating in multiple teams will be requested to select only two proposals and will be removed from the others. This may affect the eligibility condition of a given proposal, if the number of individuals goes under 2.
Although two proposals will be accepted for evaluation, only one proposal can be accepted for funding per SME or team of individuals and per call.
What are your funding criteria?
The funding process is summarised in the following figure. First your application should accomplish the eligibility criteria. Then, your proposal will go through a remote evaluation carried out by external experts that will order the proposals by rank based on a the scored obtained on the evaluation criteria. Then the selection criteria will be applied to select the experiments proposed for funding.
For detailed information on the eligibility evaluation and selection criteria, see sections 2.4.1.2, 2.4.1.3 and 2.4.1.4 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
What are the deadlines for the Open Calls?
We will publish 3 Open Calls to be opened on December 2020, August 2021 and May 2022. Only official dates for the Open Call #1 are available:
- Call opening on 09/12/2020
- Deadline for submission via FS6 Platform 08/02/2021, 12:00 (noon) CET
There will not be deadline extensions unless a major problem, caused by EUHubs4Data and not by the proposers, makes the system unavailable.
Further information about the calendar of the Open Call #1 is available on the Guidelines for Applicants.
Are you sharing any information about my proposal?
Yes. A summary of the proposals and the participants’ information will be shared with the EC. Moreover, we will publish an Open Dataset with the beneficiaries of our open call including their basic information data and funding received in our project website.
All the information that will be made public is clearly indicated in the official documentation of the call. Unless you agree on that, no technical insights will be published anywhere.
When filling up the application, should I fill all the fields?
What happens if I do not upload the files asked in the application form?
We ask for 3 files: (1) “Declaration of Honour” signed by a company representative; (2) Commitment to set up a registered SME, whose template is available in the Annex 3 of the “sub-grant agreement template”; and (3) Table proposing a set of 3-5 technical KPIs for monitoring the progress and success of the project. Documents (1) and (3) are mandatory for all applicants. Document (2) is only mandatory in the case the applicants are a group of web entrepreneurs.
If the mandatory files are empty or incomplete, your proposal will be automatically discarded.
What if I need to change the answers to my application once submitted?
If the call deadline has not passed, you can submit a new version of the proposal if, for example, you discover an error or you need to change any answer in an eligible submitted proposal. For this purpose, you must request it to F6S team through opencall@euhubs4data.eu, who will open again the application form. Once opened, you will be able to modify all questions of your application form. Please be aware that once opened, you should send again the form, or it will not be evaluated. Once resubmitted, only the last version received before the call deadline will be considered in the evaluation.
When will I hear back regarding my application?
Applicant will receive a communication with the results of the first open call from 05/04/2021 to 09/04/2021. For more information about the calendar of the first call, see section 3.4 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
Can I apply to the 2nd or 3rd call if I was not selected in the 1st or 2nd Call?
Yes, resubmission is allowed. If your experiment does not reach the funding, you can try again in the next open calls.
Besides, even if you have funded an experiment, you can propose another experiment in the following calls. However, if a beneficiary with a selected experiment fails to justify the expected results according to the set of technical KPIs defined in the sub-grant agreement, the proposals submitted in the following calls will be declared as non-eligible. Besides, if the beneficiary has already a second experiment financed, the bad justification of a prior experiment will trigger the automatic cancellation of the funding for the second experiment.
How does a good team look like?
Question 32 asks for the CVs of up to 4 team members. Please make sure to include both technical and business profiles in your team to have a balanced and capable team.
Filling in Team Members #1 and #2 is mandatory. Filling in Team Members #3 and #4 is highly advisable.
Can companies from UK participate in the open call?
The Withdrawal Agreement provides for the implementation of Union programmes and activities committed under the MFF for the years 2014-2020 and previous financial perspectives. As a consequence, UK entities remain eligible for grants and procurement procedures as if the UK was a member state for the entirety of the Horizon 2020 framework programme and previous framework programmes. This also applies for to financial support to third parties according to Article 204 FR (cascading grants), and applies for the duration of H2020 projects.
SELECTED PARTICIPANTS
When are we going to be paid? Does EUHubs4Data consider pre-financing for the beneficiaries?
As a general rule, there will be no pre-financing for beneficiaries.
The Financial support granted for each experiment (and beneficiary) will be 60.000 Euros. Payments will be executed according to the accomplishment of a set of expected technical KPIs that will help to monitor the progress of the experiment. The supervision of KPIs will be performed in two justification periods:
- Intermediate review: 30.000 Euros. [M05 after starting the experiments]
- Final evaluation once the experiment is finished: 30.000 Euros. [M10 after starting the experiment]
The DIHs involved in the experiment will be the entities in charge of monitoring the accomplishment of the technical KPIs. A positive assessment of DIHs is needed for the payment in each period. For more information about the technical KPIs monitoring the success of the experiment see section 2.4.2.2 of the guidelines for applicants.
Do I have to keep track of my expenses for justifying the costs?
It is not necessary for this project since justification is results-driven. Payments are a flat rate, which are released if some conditions are met (check the previous question or the guidelines for applicants).
Payments are released if you achieve the expected results, which are monitored through a set of technical KPIs that will be included in the sub-grant agreement (see section 2.4.2.2 of the guidelines for applicants).
Is it allowed for the beneficiary to change team members during the project?
If you participate as a team of individuals (web entrepreneurs), you have to stick to that team. Only new members can be added to improve the team but not to change the initial team.
If you are participating as an SME, you are free to add new employees from the firm to the team. Notice that the people included in the proposal must be later involved in the execution. The team could be extended with new members, but the core team included in the proposal should be maintained as you have been awarded based on this group of experts. In case of justified reason, a member could be replaced by another expert with a similar profile.
What about the property of any app/tool/software developed within the experiment?
Can the results obtained during the project be published in a research paper?
ANY QUESTION
If you need any further assistance please contact us by email or get in touch with us through our social media.
