Coordination and Collaboration Facilitation for Next Generation Future Internet Public Private Partnerships (CONCORD) (CONCORD)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Destination: Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructures
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Finland,France,Belgium,Germany,Switzerland,Germany,Belgium,Spain
Call:  (FP7-2011-ICT-FI, 2011)
Start date: 2011-04-01
End date: 2016-12-31
Duration (months): 69.0
Total project cost (EUR): 6654234.0
EU funding (EUR): 5875000.0
Participants: 11
Project status: CLOSED

CONCORD advances European Future Internet research and innovation by supporting the successful implementation of the European Commission’s Future Internet Public Private Partnership (FI-PPP) Programme. As a Programme Facilitation and Support Action, CONCORD coordinates and facilitates the alignment of FI-PPP activities to ensure the relevance, rigor and robustness of the emerging Future Internet (FI) concepts, visions and roadmaps. The co-creative CONCORD methodology is based on the SECI model (Socialisation, Externalisation, Combination,Internalisation) in a spiral development process. CONCORD implements fair, neutral, open and inclusive procedures to assist FI-PPP stakeholders to achieve commonly agreed goals. CONCORD creates an open and transparent facilitation and support mechanism that builds on a common collaboration environment through which all FI-PPP projects address common issues and are accountable for their contribution to the success of the FI-PPP Programme as a whole. CONCORD facilitates horizontal, cross-project knowledge transfer and co-creation at various levels, as well as collaboration with relevant external groups. It further supports project implementation through guidelines addressing common technical and non-technical aspects of standardization, policy, regulatory and governance frameworks, SME and user engagement and cross-project collaboration. CONCORD addresses the challenges identified and the potentially divergent interests and objectives within the FI-PPP Programme community through structured discussions and meetings, maintaining a neutral approach to the issues at hand. CONCORD promotes Programme-wide consensus, minimising the risk of dominance by any one group through clear, transparent and fair rules of participation and interaction. CONCORD focuses on the future-oriented and proactive strategic direction of the FI-PPP as a whole, highlighting the added value of its unbiased ‘outsider’ stance on the FI-PPP’s vision, structure and processes. In doing so, CONCORD leverages past experience and on-going investments for the design and development of an overall system-level Programme view built on the fruitful collaboration of all FI-PPP projects. Reflecting the priorities for Phase 3 of the FI-PPP programme, CONCORD focuses further on FI-PPP programme leadership and representation as well as on Go-To-Market -activities, together with other FI-PPP projects. As a joint-entity between CONCORD and FI-CORE, a Press Office has been created for managing strategic marketing, communications and event management. A Programme Office has also been established to facilitate co-operation between FI-PPP projects. During the last stage of the Phase 3, the emphasis shall be on the impact for the programme, supporting focused objectives for FICORE and FIWARE Foundation.

Keywords: future internet ppp,programme ccordination,facilitation,support