This winter 2023/2024, several new projects supported by the NGI, the European Commission’s initiative gathering efforts contributing to actively build and develop an internet based on trust, transparency and community, were launched all across Europe. The new projects – among which the 27 Million NGI Commons Fund project and the new policy action on the digital commons – are expected to significantly advance the work on digital commons in the EU.
These seven new projects aim to complement and extend the funding and impact of the NGI in new research and innovation areas and communities, including digital identity, large language models, and open-source supply chain security, speeding up the development and deployment of NGI solutions, while growing its relevance also at policy level. A new addition to the NGI is that four of the seven projects launched are pilots, allowing a further widening of the initiative’s activities and reach.
NNGI Transoceanic: Bridging EU-USA Innovations for Global Impact
NGI TRANSOCEANIC aims to provide an organisational and financial platform for collaborative research cycles between EU and USA innovators. Focusing on common priority topics, the project aims to facilitate engagements derived from NGI-related initiatives in the EU and counterparts like the National Science Foundation (NSF) programs in the USA. The seamless and transparent infrastructure developed by NGI Transoceanic spans advanced technology developments, joint demonstrators, and contributions to global standards.
NGI Commons: Building Bridges for Digital Sovereignty
NGI Commons aims to integrate and align relevant NGI efforts with national and Europeandigital commons policies and initiatives. By formulating a long-term strategy for InternetCommons, NGI Commons seeks to bridge the gap between grassroots commoners’
initiatives and top-down sovereignty policies, fostering a resilient and sovereign digital environment. It will work in close collaboration with all ongoing NGI projects and more specifically with the NGI Zero Commons Fund that will dedicate 21.6 million euros of R&D on technology commons that improve openness, trustworthiness, resilience and user autonomy, and make these available as free/libre/open source software and hardware.
NGI Zero Commons Fund: Nurturing Internet Commons Across Technologies
NGI Zero Commons Fund seeks to deliver, mature, and scale new internet commons acrossthe entire technology spectrum. By offering small to medium-size R&D grants and support services, the Fund aims to enhance the quality and maturity of digital commons, promoting openness, trustworthiness, resilience, and user autonomy. Between now and 2027 this NGI project will award small to medium-size R&D grants between 5.000 and 50.000 euro – with the possibility to scale them up significantly if there is proven potential. This aims to provide enough critical mass of shared building blocks and collective resources for our governments, businesses and civil society to be able to count on digital security and long term operational availability.
NGI Fediversity: Empowering Safe Spaces in the Digital Realm
The NGI Fediversity pilot will run between now and November 2026 and focuses on fostering open internet discourse and creating a federated safe space for social networking. With nearly ten million users, Fediverse prioritises safeguards for marginalised groups. NGI Fediversity aims to support wider adoption by providing deployment configurations, documentation, and success stories, thereby establishing a practical, user-friendly, and secure communication environment. It will award 450’000 euro in small to medium-size R&D grants towards solutions that bring the next generation of internet solutions closer, with the ambition of ensuring that reliability, confidentiality, integrity, security, and resource efficiency become the ‘new normal’ of the internet.
NGI Mobifree: Prioritising Privacy in the Mobile Software Ecosystem
Addressing concerns about user data collection in the mobile software ecosystem, NGI Mobifree seeks to support the digital sovereignty of European citizens and organisations. The pilot aims to create a fair mobile software ecosystem that prioritises privacy and openness, empowering users with control over their data. A range of IT areas will be covered including /e/OS, a fully-open-source operating system (OS) for Android-based phones, App stores, Messaging, Maps, Disaster & emergency response.
NGI Local for Local: Revitalising Regional Economies through Technology
NGI Local for Local addresses the economic challenges faced by certain European regions by integrating NGI building blocks into the Local for Local open-source software stack. Through financed open calls for NGI innovators, the project fosters a collaborative software ecosystem, testing the resulting software in three pilots across five European regions to strengthen local ties and empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
NGI Taler: Unveiling a Privacy-Preserving Digital Payment System
NGI Taler aims to revolutionise digital payments in Europe by introducing a new privacy-preserving digital payment system. With a focus on the finance market initially, the pilot aims to test additional domains such as independent book sectors, social inclusion, e-health, charitable domains, pledges, and crowdfunding for potential commercial usage. This will be done by building on top of GNU Taler that is a privacy-preserving digital payment system developed in the last few years also thanks to NGI funding contributions (via NGI Zero PET, NGI Zero Entrust, NGI POINTER, and NGI TRUST).
In essence, all the new NGI projects and pilots collectively represent a giant leap towards a digitally sovereign and innovative future for Europe. The NGI initiative continues to play a major role in advancing digital technologies while maintaining a commitment to trust, transparency, and community values.