Open Call 2 - Short Term and Long Term Funding to support ICT standardisation

StandICT.eu will run 6 Open Call cycles. Each call will be open for 60 days for proposal submission. At the end of the sixty-day period all proposals received through TRUST-GRANTS™ platform will be screened for eligibility, evaluated by an external pool of evaluators (EPE), scored, and ranked for funding.

This process takes approximately 35 days, at the end of which all applicants shall be notified with the result of the evaluation process (e.g., retained fellowships or not successful application)and provided with access to a Consensus Report compiled by the EPE.

To guarantee maximum fairness and transparency, each application will be independently evaluated by three members of the EPE and will undergo quality control by a fourth member of the pool after consensus is reached.

As the EPE are highly-skilled experts whose qualifications are assessed through an open call process their decision is binding and any redress requests or complaints will be dealt with strictly in relation to the procedural aspects of the evaluation and not on the merits of scientific or technical judgement of the experts.

For Open Call 2, the following priority topics have been identified:

1. Applications on Artificial Intelligence, contributing in particular to CEN-CENELEC JTC 21;
2. Applications on technical topics covered by the EC Standardisation Request on high-risk AI-systems, with the following priorities:
3. Urgent priority:
4. governance and quality of datasets,
5. accuracy specifications,
6. robustness specifications,
7. record keeping through logging capabilities,
8. transparency and information provisions for users,
9. human oversight.
10. Less urgent priority but still important:
11. risk management systems,
12. cybersecurity specifications,
13. quality management systems.

In a series of six open calls, running until August 2027, StandICT.eu will provide € 4,200,000 of direct funding to support the participation of European standardisation specialists in key international and global Standards Development Organisations (SDOs).

The objective of the funding is to enable the specialists to contribute to and help create a fully integrated European Standardisation Ecosystem, thereby strengthening Europe’s position in global standardisation initiatives.

For the first open call, applicants can request 2 types of support:

Long term contribution (LT): Contribution to ongoing standards development as a chair, convener, rapporteur or member of an SDO WG. For example, commenting on standards development and drafts, attending meetings as an observer, and paying membership fees. The fellowships covers max 9 months of activities with an amount up to 10.000 €

Short term contribution (ST): Contribution to standards documentation e.g. liaison to WG, comments on standards drafts, participation at meeting paying membership fees. The fellowship covers max 3 months of activities with an amount up to 5.000 €

More information, guidelines and application form are available here: https://standict.eu/open-call/open-call-2