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The Impact Assessment is an important part of the policy-making process, as it helps in evaluating the potential effects of proposed policies on various stakeholders and making informed decisions about whether to adopt, modify, or reject a proposed policy. It also helps to communicate the benefits of any public investment to society. For these reasons, its importance has grown over recent years, and the Research Infrastructure (RI) policy domain is no exception. The topic has been recognised in ESFRI’s White Paper (2020), where the countries were invited, with support from ESFRI and Horizon Europe, to incentivise RIs to monitor their societal and economic value and impact. Furthermore, the ESFRI Strategy working groups have organised two conferences on this topic (2018 and 2020). Impact assessment is also beneficial for RIs if used to assess and improve the functioning of an RI. It contributes to the strategic planning of an RI, reflecting on internal resource allocation and leading to constant improvement and focussing of services according to the needs of users and other stakeholders. It creates accountability and transparency and hence gives legitimacy, visibility and value to the existence of an RI. Recently, the Competitiveness Council have asked “ESFRI to look into the approaches by Member States, the Commission, international organisations and RIs to assess scientific, societal and economic impacts of investments in RIs, identify good practices, develop a monitoring framework, test it and elaborate recommendations to national and regional RI stakeholders by the end of 2023”. ESFRI has responded to this request by setting up a drafting group tasked with preparing the report based on information collected from literature, surveys and consultations with the ESFRI member countries and RIs. This report highlights the importance of understanding the differences between performance monitoring, which ESFRI started implementing last year, and impact assessment (IA), ex-ante or ex-post, for research infrastructures (RIs). It provides recommendations to stakeholders, policymakers, funders, governments, RIs, ESFRI, and the EC.

Since the introduction of the e-Infrastructure Commons in the e-IRG Roadmap 2012, some progress has been made towards an integrated e-Infrastructure landscape, most notably with the implementation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and the federation of generic (horizontal) and thematic (vertical) services from e-Infrastructures and Research Infrastructures accordingly. Still, progress is slow given the complex European research ecosystem spanning institutional, national regional and European components, at different maturity levels and speeds. The current cooperation and coordination among European e-Infrastructure initiatives and related organisations under the EOSC undertaking or other efforts, is ad-hoc and not properly framed. e-IRG sees a clear need to enhance the coordination and cooperation among major European e-Infrastructure initiatives, which are an indispensable part of EOSC. This will eventually benefit the end users who will gradually enjoy well-coordinated, joint, integrated user-friendly services, easing their work, so that they can focus on their (cross-)disciplinary research, and not the infrastructures and tools. The objective of this e-IRG White Paper 2022 is to provide recommendations to the different stakeholders to strengthen the communication between e-Infrastructure providers at European level and their cooperation towards an enhanced and coordinated strategy setting. The need for better coordination across national and European levels has also been emphasised by the European Competitiveness Council on several of their Conclusions and Recommendations in the last years, calling for an increased cooperation between research infrastructures, e-Infrastructures and stakeholders, including through EOSC. With its White Paper 2022, e-IRG thus aims to bridge the identified gaps in terms of cooperation and coordination across the major European e-Infrastructure components, reflecting on the identified issues and providing concrete proposals. Although exchanges between the major European e-Infrastructures actors are already taking place at project-based or other ad-hoc levels, e-IRG believes that a regular, well-framed and high-level coordination at strategy level would be beneficial for the ecosystem, as it would ensure a steady dialogue and flow of information and common understanding across all actors. An umbrella e-Infrastructure Forum as already recommended in the e-IRG White Paper 2013 and e-IRG Roadmap 2016 (or other lightweight structure) with representatives of the major e-Infrastructure initiatives will enable the above mentioned flow of information, steady dialogue and common understanding and be able to foresee and proactively resolve issues and frictions among e-Infrastructures. The e-Infrastructure Forum or Assembly should facilitate high-level strategy-setting, community building, and coordination of the entire e-Infrastructure landscape. Some form of representation of users is also favoured in the Forum, possibly advisory and domain-agnostic/neutral, such as via ESFRI Clusters that covers all thematic domains or other structures. Besides EOSC, EuroHPC is the other major recent undertaking building a set of word-class High Performance Computing (HPC) systems across Europe, which already yielded impressive results as several EuroHPC systems have already been inaugurated and are featuring in the first places of the Top500 and Green500 benchmarks. e-IRG sees that coordination between EuroHPC, EOSC and related e-Infrastructures would be required in the near future. Interoperability between the EOSC and EuroHPC federations would also provide strong benefits for the end users of computing and data services. It is thus recommended to invite EuroHPC to join the envisaged coordination and collaboration structure(s) in the near future. Furthermore, e-IRG emphasised the importance of having transparent funding streams, costs and business models of each e-Infrastructure provider to facilitate their long-term sustainability. In the preparation of this document, e-IRG, as an independent body of representatives from European countries, has initiated the discussion between all stakeholders and is aiming at liaising as a neutral platform with the corresponding bodies, offering its expertise and high-level advice for the alleviation of fragmentation towards the envisaged integrated and holistic e-Infrastructure environment, facilitating such a cooperation and coordination framework.

The e-IRG Workshop organised in the framework of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the Union was implemented on 12.-13. December as hybrid event in Prague and online. The Workshop continued the long-standing insightful accomplishments of the e-IRG Workshop series. The Workshop series addresses important and relevant topics concerning the European e-Infrastructure landscape, the interconnection of e-Infrastructures themselves, as well as to Research Infrastructures. The e-IRG Workshop is not only an instrument for e-IRG to explore specific e-Infrastructure topics in depth, but also aims to provide views and opinions on topics expected to have an impact on the future developments in the European e-Infrastructure domain and beyond. The Workshop under the Czech EU Presidency had four sessions addressing the i) interconnection, coordination and cooperation of European e-Infrastructures, ii) the energy crisis and its impact on e-Infrastructures, iii) the interconnection of the European Data Infrastructure and the Common European Data Spaces and finally iv) the Interlinking and interaction between data, publications and persistent identifiers.

The e-IRG Workshop under French EU Presidency was again organised as a virtual event. Having performed 4 such successful events already and capitalising on the knowledge and experience gained, it organised its fifth and most recent one under the auspices of the French EU Presidency. This workshop, following the priorities set by the EU Presidency, conducted asa series of three webinars on the development of e-Infrastructures in the European ResearchArea and beyond. More specifically thiswebinar series covered in its first session the topic“Towards a sustainable EOSC - The role of e-Infrastructures”, in the second the“Twin ‘green and digital’ transition in e-Infrastructures”, and in the third and final session the“Cross-e-Infrastructure collaboration and coordination (network, computing, data)”.

The e-IRG Workshop, organised in the framework of the Slovenian EU Presidency, took place on 1.-2. December 2021. The Workshop was implemented as three virtual sessions addressing main topics of the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the Union concerning the resilience of Europe, its future and way of life, and the stability in the European neighbourhood. The three main topics addressed were i) Need for resilient and reconfigurable e-Infrastructures, ii) Gender balance in e-Infrastructures, Careers in e-Infrastructures and iii) Western Balkans and EU collaboration. The workshop had a specific focus on e-Infrastructures as they play an even more important role addressing the grand challenges of today's society.

With the e-IRG White Paper2021e-IRG is following up on its previous policy paper entitled “National Nodes – Getting organised; how far are we? - Implementing the e-Infrastructure Commons and the European Open Science Cloud.” The e-IRG White Paper 2021 responds both to the 2018 Council Conclusions on EOSC that called for the e-IRG expertise, and also to the 2020 Council Conclusions on the new ERA, both of which encouraged the EC and the Member States/Associated Countries “to increase the level of national and European coordination, in particular on research infrastructures and e-infrastructures”. The e-IRG White Paper 2021 is envisaged as a collection of separate but interrelated topics and starts with the area of “Good practices of coordination within and across e-Infrastructures and thematic Research Infrastructures''. It presents a set of paradigms at institutional, national, and regional level, showcasing either integral and holistic views or highlighting specific aspects, which may be useful for other institutions, countries, or regions. The good practices section is thus not considered complete or exhaustive. It is not an outcome of yet another questionnaire to all EU countries, rather a proactive response from some countries who came forward providing their experiences, which may be helpful for others. A set of guiding questions was prepared, yet the individual contributions that can be found in the annexes do not have the exact same structure, as it is clear that a one size fits all is not the case around Europe.&nbsp

The e-IRG Workshop, organised in the framework of the German EU Presidency, took place on 1.- 2. December 2020. The Workshop was implemented as three virtual sessions with the overall theme ofhow e-Infrastructures can support addressing societal challenges,including public health and climate change. Presentations ranged from institutional to national, EU and international levels, and from users to providers, and policy makers/funders perspectives. The presentations of the workshop were selected in order to reflect on the current developments in the e-Infrastructures domain, including the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), High Performance Computing (PRACE and EuroHPC) and networking, and how these are linked with some of the societal challenges in different thematic areas. The three main topics addressed were i)Research Data Infrastructures, as data is the common denominator both within e-Infrastructures and across e-Infrastructures and thematic infrastructures, ii)The support of e-Infrastructures to the digital transformation in the health sector, where the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated and amplified processes, and iii) one of the biggest challenges for mankind ahead, i.e. the climate change, and theimpact and benefits of e-Infrastructures in support of the EU Green deal policy,i.e. to become “climate neutral” by 2050 (without greenhouse gases).

The terme-Infrastructure Commonswas initially presented in the e-IRG Roadmap 2012. e-IRG uses the metaphor of the Commons for the e-Infrastructure resources and related services, which among others refer to networking, computing, storage, data and software, along with digital tools and collaboration opportunities. In the e-IRG Roadmap 2012, e-IRG outlines Europe's need for a single "e-Infrastructure Commons" for knowledge, innovation and science. The e-Infrastructure Commons is the political, technological, and administrative framework for an easy and cost-effective shared use of distributed electronic resources across Europe. The e-Infrastructure Commons can be defined as an integrated living ecosystem of resources and services that is open, user friendly and accessible to European researchers and scientists, and continuously adapts to the changing requirements of research and science.

The unifying goal of the e-IRG Workshop organized in the framework of the Portuguese EU Presidencywas toaddress thee-Infrastructures for Climate Change and Digital Transitions, ranging from Member States/Associated Countries to European and international level, and from provider to user level. The event was conducted as a series of three (3) webinars, each of them addressing one of the top challenges the e-infrastructures face in an ever changing and transforming environment. The first webinar session was on “EOSC data and interoperability”, the second on “Addressing climate change – the digital aspects”, and the third one on “Going beyond: How policies can shape the development of research infrastructures facilitating data sovereignty, innovation and cultural change“.

This document identifies and evaluates a set of business models for procuring services in EOSC and maps them to the EOSC ecosystem. It identifies open issues requiring more analysis, along with related opportunities and risks. A roadmap for activities beyond the life of the project is presented, including recommendations for key stakeholders.

e-IRGsees its mandate as an independent body, composed of representatives from the Member States and Associated Countries, to monitor the processes and developments towards a full implementation of the e-Infrastructure Commons through thepartnershipsof all stakeholders, theinterconnectability and convergence of servicesof the National Nodes (NOSCs) in the Member States and Associated Countries and at the European level. Finally, e-IRG aims to promote the digital transformation and the crucial role of e-Infrastructures in the new ERA and beyond, given also the foreseen pillars on Open Science, Open Innovation and Grand Challenges including health, digital and industry, climate, etc. The unique positioning of future e- IRG lies in providing policy advice on the intersection of EOSC ('HE'), EuroHPC ('Digital Europe') and the digital transformation of the Research and Innovation domain ('ERA') in general.

Recallingthe work of the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG) on thee-Infrastructure Commonsbased on the“e-IRG Roadmap 2012”, the “e-IRG White Paper 2013”, and the “Marketplace for e-Infrastructure Services”documentwhich paved the wayto the establishment ofEuropean Open Science Cloud (EOSC);the e-IRG Roadmap 2016,5defining a clear route on how to evolve the European e- Infrastructure ecosystem, with clear recommendations to all related stakeholders including the national governments and funding agencies,which also contributed to further evolution of the EOSC concept;the e-IRG response to the EOSC Staff Working Document (SWD) in 2018;and the May 2018 Council Conclusions on EOSC6that encouraged Member States to “get organized so as to prepare them for the connection to EOSC” and called on“the Commission to make optimal use of ongoing projects, existing expertise and knowledge available via existing initiatives, such as ESFRI, eIRG, GO FAIR and others”,which resulted in the e-IRG National Nodes document7,8”National Nodes - Getting organised; how far are we?”in May 2019;the work of e-IRG providing guidance and advice on the electronic needs to the ESFRI Roadmaps’ proposersthrough dedicated documentsand guides. Reaffirmingthe autonomy, neutrality and openness of e-IRG asadvisory body for the EC, the Member States and Associated Countries,in thewhole spectrum of e-Infrastructures,comprising EOSC, HPC/EuroHPC,network, data and connected services,addressing short-term aspects, but also facilitating discussions and reflections on long-term aspects in the e-Infrastructure area,providing a platform for all stakeholders to debate their views, and offer perspectives, analyse and propose approaches and consolidate ways forward.

Governments around the world face policy issues that require strategies and solutions using new technologies, access to data, new analytical tools and techniques and social crowdsourcing analysis for the successful implementation and acceptance of public policies and their later assessment. Data is a fundamental resource for carrying out all government activities and governments everywhere, and at all levels, are looking into the opportunities of data-driven innovation. In this context, the PolicyCLOUD environment will introduce a holistic methodology for policy modelling and management based on data, providing a toolkit that allows both stakeholders and engaged citizens to create policies by exploiting the PolicyCLOUD models and analytical tools on various datasets, contexts and policy models. The document D7.2: Market Analysis and Business Potentials is the first deliverable of the PolicyCLOUD business- related activities, setting the market context where the project’s results will be exploited and giving an initial insight about these results. Following the proven Atos’ “Innovation Hub Methodology”, that divides the project time period in two different phases (analysis and strategy), the Consortium has conducted several activities, notable amongst those is the Value Proposition Canvas Workshop. This was an interactive session during First General Assembly, held remotely on the 7th May 2020, focusing on the PolicyCLOUD core offering and stakeholders that could obtain the greatest value of the solution. Initial versions of deliverables D2.1: State of the art and requirement analysis and D2.2: Conceptual Model and Reference Architecture have given input to this deliverable, especially in the analysis of the technological context and in the identification of the project’s outcomes and their main features. The results of this deliverable D7.2 will in turn come back to the technical Work Packages (WPs) and will influence the architecture design with the aim of solving real problems that users have. Ultimately, this is the goal of the business activities of the project, ensure that the finished technology is usable, engaging end users from the initial phases of the project and facilitating its further use. The feedback expected from the Impact Creation Board in relation to this deliverable will be key to design next activities and to support project’s innovation., This version is submitted to the EC, not yet aproved, {"references":["IG POLICY CANVAS. D5.2 Roadmap for Future Research Directions. Mureddu, Francesco. 2019.","EC Europa. Funding & Tenders. https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding- tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/dt-governance-12-2019-2020, retrieved 2020-05-20","Strategyzer. Value Proposition Canvas. https://www.strategyzer.com/canvas/value-proposition-canvas, retrieved 2020-06-01","Mind Tools. SWOT Analysis. https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm, retrieved 2020- 06-01","EC Europa. A European strategy for data. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/policies/building- european-data-economy, retrieved 2020-06-05","EC Europa. From the PSI to the Open Data Directive. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/public- sector-information-psi-directive-open-data-directive, retrieved 2020-06-05","EC Europa. The European Cloud Initiative. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/european-cloud- initiative, retrieved 2020-06-05","EC Europa. Entrepreneurship and SMEs. https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes_en, retrieved 2020-05-06","EC Europa. Digital Innovation Hubs. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/digital-innovation-hubs, retrieved 2020-06-08","EC Europa. 2050 long-term strategy https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/strategies/2050_en, retrieved 2020-06-01","Harward Business Review. What Data Scientist really Do. https://hbr.org/2018/08/what-data-scientists- really-do-according-to-35-data-scientists, retrieved 2020-06-15","EC Europa. The new European Interoperability Framework. https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/eif_en, retrieved 2020-05-09","Markets and Markets. Big Data Market. https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/big- data-market-1068.html, retrieved 2020-05-20","Market Data Forecast. Europe Big Data Market. https://www.marketdataforecast.com/market- reports/europe-big-data-market, retrieved 2020-05-20","Grand View Research. Big Data Market Size. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry- analysis/big-data-industry, retrieved 2020-05-20","Market Research Future. Data Analytics Market Size. https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/data-analytics-market-1689, retrieved 2020-05-20","Lisbon Council. The European Data Market Monitoring Tool Report. http://datalandscape.eu/sites/default/files/report/EDM_D2.5_Second_Report_on_Policy_Conclusions_final_ 13.06.2019.pdf#page=50&zoom=100,92,97, retrieved 2020-06-15","Gold Stein Research. Europe Big Data Market. https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/report/europe-big- data-market-trends-size-forecast, retrieved 2020-05-20","BDVA. SRIA. http://www.bdva.eu/sites/default/files/EuropeanBigDataValuePartnership_SRIA__v3.pdf, retrieved 2020-06-14","InkWood Research. Europe Big Data Market. https://www.inkwoodresearch.com/reports/europe-big- data-market/, retrieved 2020-05-20"]}

Thee-IRG workshoporganised within the framework of the Croatian EU Presidency was conducted as a series of three webinars, each of them addressing one of the top challenges for the further development of e-Infrastructures in the Europe Research Area and beyond: development of adequate skills, partnerships between related stakeholders within and across national boundaries, and sharing of data under the FAIR principles, within and across scientific domains, institutionsand countries. &nbsp

e-IRG is a recognised strategic body composed of national delegates to facilitate integration in the area of European e-Infrastructures and connected services, within and between Member States, at the European level and globally. This e-IRG policy document addresses the role of the national nodes - including their coordination with the thematic ones - in the implementation of the e-Infrastructure Commons and its instantiation as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Thedocument "National Nodes, getting organized, how far are we?" thus covers both the situation within and between member states and should be considered as a snapshot at the time of publication. e-IRG is overlooking the whole e-Infrastructure spectrum, from networking and computing to data and other services (such as middleware, software and related tools/services), covering not only short-term but also longer-term aspects, advising both Member States and the European Commission. Thus, the document covers all e-Infrastructure components, with emphasis on governance, funding and access policies. It should be noted that e-IRG does not undertake anyoperative role or implementation mandates, e.g. within EOSC or EuroHPC and keeps an advisory role. The EOSC initiative is intended to comprise policy decisions as well as the concrete implementation to support the Open Science policy the Europe Union and its Member States or Associated Countries have committed to. Today, in May 2019, the degree to which different e-Infrastructures are coordinated and made interoperable within the entire e-Infrastructure landscape at national and international level varies hitherto heavily from country to country in Europe. e‐IRG advocates an interoperable, federated ecosystem of domain-specific (vertical) Research Infrastructure and generic (horizontal) e-Infrastructures already at national level, which will facilitate the European level federation, such as in the form of EOSC.

In this report, we provided a summary of the work conducted in the e-IRGSP5 in the area of collection, aggregation and publication of policy and cost-related information/metrics/Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In the first place, we have defined the audience to which it is addressed, being mainly funding agencies and policy makers in the area of e-Infrastructures, EU-funded e-Infrastructure projects and managers, along with individual users/researchers. We also outlined general rules, which lead to the definition of indicators that fulfil its role.

In this report, we provided a summary of the work conducted in the e-IRGSP5 in the area of collection, aggregation and publication of policy and cost-related information/metrics/Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In the first place, we have defined the audience to which it is addressed, being mainly funding agencies and policy makers in the area of e-Infrastructures, EU-funded e-Infrastructure projects and managers, along with individual users/researchers. We also outlined general rules, which lead to the definition of indicators that fulfil its role. The internal methodology and analysis tracks􏱪 process we conducted isthen presented. The analysis of the problem is very difficult and comprises many levels. It resulted in an approach composed of three tracks where different perspectives are considered: information from projects, literature review and H2020 goals and impacts. Project investigation, interviews, literature review, conference discussions show us that many projects are not prepared for discussion especially in the area of interest of this project, namely policy and financial aspects. While technical and operational indicators in many cases are decently recognized in the projects, the policy and financial metrics seem to be less relevant and analysed. Especially financial information is very hard to retrieve from projects and even more difficult for the e-Infrastructures, including their national components. However, some basic level information is required for accountability and transparency, which may also contribute to assessing the effectiveness of the funds spent and the ultimately the competitiveness of e-Infrastructures in comparison with commercial commodity services. It is noticeable that many of the measurements presented by projects as KPIs are only metrics. External experts have been involved in the project work, including a professional accountant with experience in e-Infrastructures. The external financial and policy experts, supported us in our work, and guided us with numerous suggestions. The proposed methodology for the collection of such indicators is then presented; a three-stepapproach for setting and collecting indicators is proposed, which is aligning the defined metrics withimpacts and goals determined by funding institutions, in-line with the e-IRG KPI framework document . The first step is the specification of high-level goals of the involved actors (including mainly the e- Infrastructures themselves, the funding agencies and the end users), second, the classification of goals into broad categories and third, the harmonisation of indicators and a basic categorisation of KPIs. Next we provide a proposed of list of metrics divided into three categories: H2020 generic, applicable for most of the EU funded projects and e-Infrastructures, eInfra generic􏱫more specialized on e- Infrastructures but still general, and eInfra specific􏱫serving as examples more-oriented on specific eInfra projects􏱪activities. Financial metrics are also provided in a similar approach, which allow economic-oriented monitoring. We are concluding with the set of recommendations on future developments and the evolution of the European e-infrastructures landscape and associated costs.

In the Roadmap 2016 e-IRG intends to define a clear route on how to evolve the European e- Infrastructure system further, and turn the vision of the e-Infrastructure Commons into reality for 2020. e-IRG is convinced that the implementation of the e-Infrastructure Commons is a large step towards European leadership in research infrastructures including e-Infrastructures, including the realisation of the European Open Science Cloud and the EU Data Infrastructure, which are part of the Digital Single Market Technologies and the Public Service Modernisation Package.

The term e-Infrastructure Commons as introduced in the e-IRG documentsrefers to an ecosystem of interoperable and gradually integrated services easily accessible for use through a single interface for European academia, research and scientific communities. The e-Infrastructure Commons should thus become by 2020 a one-stop-shop service for European researchers, being able to select not only research e-Infrastructure services, but also industrial ones, especially such as computing and storage ones. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, a concrete step would be to create a marketplace of e-Infrastructure services, i.e. a central marketplace where basic e-Infrastructure services from the networking, computing and data components would become available for European users through a common authentication and authorization scheme.

The term e-Infrastructure Commons as introduced in the e-IRG documents1refers to an ecosystem of interoperable and gradually integrated services easily accessible for use through a single interface for European academia, research and scientific communities. The e-Infrastructure Commons should thus become by 2020 a one-stop-shop service for European researchers, being able to select not only research e-Infrastructure services, but also industrial ones, especially such as computing and storage ones.

The e-IRG Roadmap 2012 outlines a need for a European “e-Infrastructure Commons” for knowledge, innovation and science in order to meet the challenges of implementing the EU’s 2020 Strategy.To implement such an e-Infrastructure Commons, a high degree of collaboration and standardisation is required. Furthermore, to provide users with leading edge services, a constant innovation at all levels is necessary. A certain degree of competition helps to ensure high quality of services and effective service provision.As a living ecosystem, an e-Infrastructure Commons must be flexible and able to change dynamically, efficiently, and in a future-proof manner. e-Infrastructures for research will only provide real value if they can provide services which are way ahead of what commercial providers can offer.In order to achieve all this, an ecosystem of different organisations is needed, both at the national and international levels, each with their own focus but also with effective coordination between them.

Between December 2012 and May 2013 a Task Force of the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG) considered the legal and regulatory issues likely to arise from the increasing use of state-funded e-Infrastructures by non-state funded researchers and organisations. Such use, on a national and international scale, appears essential to achieve the Horizon 2020 goals for a European Digital Research Area. The Task Force report formed part of the e-IRG White Paper 2013 (long version).This document contains the text of the report and, as annexes, the individual working papers that were developed as input to the final report. These provide further detail on the following topics: State Aid Pre-Commercial Procurement and Public Procurement of Innovation Network Regulation Data Protection Terms of Use Software Licenses

In the emerging era ofOpen Science,research infrastructures, such as the ESFRI projects, play a fundamental role as major data production factories. For science to function effectively, and forsociety to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavours, scientific data must be made open. Openness and sharing of data allows value creation in terms of new knowledge, products and ideas through re-using, re-purposing or computing of the data. There can of course be some limitations to complete openness induced by personal data protection, security or private investments. Still, the general principle of open science is now being embraced by a growing number of funding agencies worldwide, including the European Commission[EC]. e-Infrastructures provide the tools for creating the added value from data, as well as the technologies for implementing appropriate security and data protection policies. These digital tools include high-speed internet for connecting people and data, powerful computing facilities for analysis and modelling, as well as the technologies that allow the combined use of digitally enabled resources. The purpose of this Blue Paper is to describe some basic data management principles for research infrastructures so as to facilitate the future use of the data produced in the best interest of the general public. The e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG) is working towards a vision of an open e- Infrastructure that enables flexible cooperation and optimal use of all electronically available resources. A first Blue Paper to ESFRI was published in 2010, describing the ways ESFRI projects and their users can engage and exploit common e-Infrastructure services to satisfy their requirements. This Blue Paper focuses on cross-cutting themes for all research infrastructures related to data management. We believe that implementation of the recommendations given in this Blue Paper will significantly contribute to an increased return on public investments in research infrastructures through easy and secure access to the data produced, improved reliability and searchability, as well as interoperability with other elements of a global data infrastructure.

In this paper we introduce EUMEDGRID, an EU-funded project with the objectives of building the first high performance computing grid extending across the Mediterranean, and fostering national grid initiatives in the Mediterranean region., peer-reviewed