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

Description

CONCORD is the Facilitation and Support action for the EU-funded Future Internet Public-Private Partnerships (FI PPP) programme. CONCORD supports the European Commission in implementing a coherent FI PPP programme in a way that makes it more than the sum of its 10 constituent projects. Concord proposes and coordinates cross-project activities.
CONCORD advocates fair, neutral, open and inclusive procedures to assist FI PPP stakeholders achieve commonly agreed goals. Reflecting this, CONCORD creates an open and transparent decision-making mechanism that builds on a collaboration environment through which all 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, legal and governance frameworks, SME and user involvement, 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 is designed to promote program-wide consensus, minimizing the risk of dominance by any one group through clear, transparent and fair rules of participation and interaction. CONCORD focuses on the future-oriented strategic direction of the FI PPP as a whole, highlighting the added value of its unbiased ?outsider? stance on the FI PPP?s structure and processes. In so doing, 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.