News

CERIC at the InRoad 2nd Validation Workshop

Location
1-2 October 2018, Brussels – Belgium 03.10.2018

“Exchanges of practices relating to national research infrastructures roadmapping, addressed through a Mutual Learning Exercise, could help Countries in improving and aligning the process” – stated CERIC Executive Director, Jana Kolar, at the InRoad Validation Workshop held on 1-2 October in Brussels, where other 72 Research Infrastructure (RI) stakeholders from 21 different countries participated.

The H2020 project, which is currently at the very latest stage of implementation, delivers recommendations and benchmarks for better coordination of RIs’ policies and funding mechanisms in Europe.

The workshop’s discussion started from a set of preliminary policy insights and findings developed in a briefing note previously circulated among participants. After their review and validation, missing elements and gaps in the current results were identified, to address them in the final report. Finally, the discussion focused on the challenges linked to the implementation of the project’s findings.

Among the invited speakers, Peter Fletcher, InRoad Advisory Board member, underlined why coordination matters especially for researchers and for the rationalization of costs. He also mentioned the importance for researchers to work on common objectives, for agencies to be clear on their requirements and for policy-makers to work together on standards to favour coordination. Philippe Froissard, Deputy Head of Unit Research Infrastructures at the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation gave a presentation on the European context towards long-term sustainability of RI. Andrew Smith, Head of External Relations at Elixir, talked about the perspectives of a distributed RI on the limits and benefits of coordination of RI policies and funding. Finally, Gabriela Pastori, Head of International Relations at BBSRC, mentioned the importance of roadmapping to identify and prioritise research and innovation capability and to plan investment accordingly.

Interactive thematic discussions took place on:

• Coordination between national and European roadmapping processes;
• Embedding RI roadmap processes in national research and innovation systems;
• Higher degree of coordination between regional, national and European funding framework;
• Towards best practices and common standards for RI business planning.

Mutual learning, training, political commitment and the demonstration of the importance and relevance of RI are some of the actions suggested during the event.

The Workshop ended with the validation of the project preliminary findings and policy insights developed in the Briefing Note. The outputs of the discussions now enable the project to refine the preliminary insights. Furthermore, the identified gaps will be addressed and compiled in the final report, which will be released during the InRoad project final conference in December 2018.