NGIatlantic.eu Grants Platform: Open Call cycle management made easy
Custom-made by one of the European SMEs in the project, Trust-IT, the NGIatlantic.eu TRUST-Grants™ Platform is at the core of the engagement, outreach and exploitation strategy of the project, it is the technological engine behind the Open Call process and the arena where EU and US research and industry stakeholders join forces on NGI experiments.
April 2020
More than 50 evaluators are called to assess the project proposals received to help distribute the 2.8 million euro the project has access to and where we are expecting to receive around 150 applications submitted from European Organisations, of which, 30 proposals retained for funding which will then undergo a monitoring and assessment phase: it is expected that a potential community of over 1,500 stakeholders from at least 20 EU countries and the US will revolve around the NGIatlantic.eu Grants Platform, one of the keys to the success of the project, where proposals are submitted, evaluated and their results assessed and showcased, all in one place.
Managing Open Call Cycles Seamlessly
The NGIatlantic.eu tailored platform has been developed to perform an open, transparent and smooth process of application for funds, namely the 5 Open Calls that the project is leading during the 30 months. With a user-friendly interface and navigation functionalities, the dashboard is easily accessed by creating an account on NGIatlantic.eu and serves the different phases necessary for a streamlined submission process for both applicants and for administrators.
- Manages All Applications & Evaluation of Proposals. Once theNGIatlantic.eu Open Calls are launched, the platform becomes the principal interface for the received applications. The selected evaluators are able, by accessing their own profile, to see the applications they have been assigned to (but not the concurrent ones assigned to other reviewers), and perform their evaluation. A comments option is available on the voting system, allowing evaluators to motivate their choice to the other voting partners. After the closure of each call, a ranking of the applications helps determine which one has been approved for funding. Applicants can track the status of their application directly from their dashboard. Moreover, an instant message functionality allows direct contact with the administrators.
- Provides a Streamlined Monitoring Reporting System. After the research teams have been selected for funding, the platform still continues to be the primary environment for assessment and monitoring of the experiments’ results: applicants are invited to upload all the periodic reports related to the experiments in their dedicated space and make them available for the partners in charge of monitoring. The monitoring system allows partners to easily access the funded project reports and insert comments.
- Manages & Stores all Administration & Funding Requests & Reports. Thanks to the Grants Platform, all the profiles are stored and managed in one single place, allowing an easy and fair tracking of the information in each single phase of the Open Calls workflow. The platform allows an easy management of the status of the applications (e.g., eligible, under evaluation, approved, monitored) and the subsequent funding steps are described.
One dashboard, different users.
Each different actor in the project is assigned a specific role within the dashboard. The administrators (the Project Partners) have full access rights and can peruse all the information concerning the existing applications and the applicant’s profiles. A user-friendly panel guides each user to perform his/her tasks according to the respective rights, i.e. to filter its own applications, see the calls results, access the periodic reports or activate a filtered view, with an enhanced user experience.
The NGIatlantic.eu platform is a customized instantiation of the TRUST-GRANTS™ solution developed by Trust-IT’s technical development team, and uses the very latest web technologies. The backend is written in Django framework, which through RESTful API dialogues with the frontend written entirely in Angular 6. The message exchange protocol for the API is Json. This is linked with the public web portal developed in Drupal 7, that through the RESTful module, is able to manage the users registered on the web portal.
The NGIatlantic.eu Grants Platform was first used to manage the call for the External Pool of Evaluators (EPE), launched on 31st January 2020 to select a board in charge of evaluating the applications received through the following Open Calls. The first NGIatlantic.eu Open Call was launched in April 2020 (click here for more information). The platform also hosts the Twinning Lab, the webspace where researchers, innovators and start-ups can discover and connect with transatlantic actors and establish complementary partnerships in addressing NGI challenges across a number of topics.