The NGI initiative, launched by the European Commission in the autumn of 2016, aims to do things very differently from the research and development activities of past programmes.
SpeakNGI.eu, which ran from 1 October 2017 until 31 March 2019, was one of the four “Pathfinder” projects, responsible for shaping the vision, strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and implementation of the European Commissions’ human-centric Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. SpeakNGI.eu was the project responsible for establishing and implementing an open, dynamic and continuous consultation process for capturing the requirements and needs of the NGI communities, in their respective stakeholder groups, ranging from researchers, industry, both large and small, representatives of civil society, and citizens.
The NGI initiative aims to shape the future internet as an interoperable platform ecosystem that embodies the values that Europe holds dear including openness, inclusivity, transparency, privacy, cooperation, and freedom.
The main contributions of SpeakNGI.eu have come from the NGI Consultation Platform and Knowledge Base designed, developed and maintained by the project team since October 2017. The Consultation Platform has enabled validation of the community generated research and innovation priorities, with the production of valuable content, publicly available for post-processing and interpretation via the Knowledge Base.
Our project successfully completed several activities that are contributing to the highest impact creation, including:
- Establishing the sustainable base for design and implementation of plans for a large-scale research and innovation flagship initiative on the Next-Generation Internet: An Open Internet, essentially by means of the community built around the Consultation Platform. The community-generated content on the Consultation Platform and the Knowledge Base collated and curated from the content directly to support the expected impact of building an open, dynamic and growing compendium of valuable knowledge on NGI research and innovation;
- Prototyping and validating new processes for research and innovation, with a clear focus on attracting new leading – edge, innovative and key internet players from the SME, start-ups and entrepreneurs communities to be at the centre of the initiative building process;
- Creation of a framework and platform for mobilising the new players indispensable for agile research and innovation on NGI, including SMEs, start-ups, and entrepreneurs;
- Building an active, visible and agile ecosystem comprising all relevant stakeholders for making the NGI initiative a success. This has been tangibly demonstrated by the establishment and active involvement of the Early Adopters Club, comprising 70+ motivated internet innovators showcasing NGI technologies and proving the “human-at-the-centre” values of NGI;
- Inclusion of the Global Internet Policy Observatory (GIPO) tool and community into the NGI ecosystem. This is core to building a niche for NGI on internet policy and civil society, supported also by experts within the project’s European Champions Panel bringing multi-disciplinary perspectives to the overall NGI ecosystem;
- Building an open, dynamic and growing knowledge base of technological trends, initiatives and key players in the areas related to NGI.
The SpeakNGI.eu partners are Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), Ireland and Trust-IT, Italy.
For more information, please visit the WIT website.
