Policy, research and practice have all equally observed both high need and great pressure to improve the education and training regarding digitalisation in youth work. Our project “Digitalisation: from spaces of fear to spaces of freedom” responds to this need and translates the triangle of policy, research and practice into its project design.Through our project, we develop a systemic approach that adapts the European Reference Framework for Digital Competences (DigComp) for the training of youth workers on digitalisation in a two-step methodology.The first step is the qualification of youth workers as competent digital actors in the context of their own professional community. To this end, we adapt the European Union’s Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp in its current version 2.1) to the context of youth work. We develop a self-assessment instrument for youth workers, then design curricula as well as open educational resources for modular trainings on the competence areas of the framework, test the curricula and resources in pilot modules, and then publish the refined curricula and resources under a free license for use by the entire youth sector.The second step is the qualification of youth workers as specialists on digitalisation in youth work. To this end, we translate the recommendations of the European Commission’s Expert Group on “Digitalisation and Youth” into practice, and again develop curricula as well as open educational resources to address the competence areas identified by the expert group, test them, and make the final versions available under a free license.We support the recognition of the learning youth workers acquire through our modules by developing a youth-work-specific version of the DigComp certification process (DigCompYouthWork).An accompanying podcast will address the challenges as well as the potentials of digitalisation for youth work in a decisively unagitated manner, and contribute to a calmer and more informed discourse on digitalisation.A sector-wide conference on digitalisation in youth work will conclude the project and lead to the creation of a European network on digital youth work.Feel free to visit our project website at digitalyouthwork.org.

Increasing both transparency and efficiency of public spending in the age of austerity presents formidable challenges for European societies. Innovative, open data tools hold the key to simultaneously meet both. The key objective of the proposed project is to combine the provision of data on public spending in the area of public procurement with actionable governance indicators and a monitoring procedure facilitating whistleblowing and thus strengthening accountability and transparency of public administrations. Since public procurement is prone to corruption and budget deficit risks, high quality open data and innovative assessment tools in this area are especially relevant for the efficient and transparent use of public resources. The project, in particular, aims to systematically collect, analyse, and broadly disseminate tender-level information on public procurement in 35 jurisdictions across Europe. This data will be linked to company and public organisation information on finances and ownership and to information on mechanisms that increase accountability of public officials in order to systematically investigate the patterns and mechanisms of allocation of public resources in Europe. The proposed project addresses directly the objectives of the call by using innovative ICT-based measures and services which will provide wide access to information about governments’ spending and additionally involve private and public agents to actively collaborate in improving the quality and volume of the relevant data. Partners represent an effective combination of large, well-renowned institutions and small and highly-innovative ones, including scientists and researchers from computer and political sciences, sociology, criminology, and economics at 6 institutions from 5 European countries, both old and new members states. The project builds extensively on the partners’ prior innovative work in this area as well as their rich experience with EU funded projects.

The Open Data INcubator for Europe (ODINE) project will set up an environment to support and advice SMEs and start-ups in creating commercial added value from open data. Drawing on the experience from key players in the consortium including Wayra (an incubator/accelerator), Fraunhofer IAIS and the ODI (both data facilitators and incubators), Telefonica (providing computing infrastructure and strong links to data protection and privacy stakeholders), and the University of Southampton (renowned for its open data research and home of Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt), we plan to establish a EU-wide, industry-focused network of open data companies around Europe, promoted and guided by the trusted authorities and commentators at the Guardian and OKFN. To achieve this we shall take an approach that follows ‘best in class’ practice for incubators and which makes it as a simple and smooth as possible for SMEs to apply for help. We will offer: (i) a transparent, fair, and efficient proposal process for SMEs and start-ups, based around Wayra, IAIS and ODI’s existing and successful processes; (ii) a network of European open data SMEs and start-ups; (iii) initial investment in these companies through an open call; (iv) incubation and mentoring by ODI, Fraunhofer and Wayra academies, with the possibility of acceleration via Wayra, Telefonica Ventures, and Fraunhofer Venture; (v) access to data services and computing infrastructure from IAIS, ODI, OKFN and Telefonica; (vi) expert support from serial entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, and coaching from business schools; as well as (vii) high visibility through promotion of success stories by the Guardian, ODI and the OKFN. A successful open data incubator will significantly help Europe to regain leadership in technical innovation, balanced with the ethical treatment of data for which the public are crying out, and to create skilled jobs that help Europe become more productive and competitive in the 21st Century.

OpenBudgets.eu will provide an open-source software framework and accompanying Software-As-A-Service (SAAS) platform for supporting financial transparency, thus enhancing accountability within public sectors, and as a result preventing corruption. A key challenge addressed by OpenBudgets.eu is to provide a multi-stakeholder framework which is scalable, easy-to-use, flexible and attractive. The core objectives of OpenBudgets.eu project are: * A semantic data model, which will be used to integrate all relevant budget and transaction data, giving a pre-defined structure to the input data. This will enable the integration of data from different public sectors at different levels. This integration can then be exploited by comparing different datasets. * A library of visualisation tools with a user-friendly interface, which will enable stakeholders to visualise available data in different granularity and in different modalities (spatial, temporal, administrative). These tools will enable the scrutiny of data under different lenses, enabling stakeholders to explore any relevant budget allocation. * A library of data mining and comparative analysis tools. This library will enable the aggregation of existing data in order to obtain new outcomes and discover trends and patterns, and potentially forecasting budget measures. * A feedback and citizen engagement interface which enables users to discuss and give feed-back on the provided data, for example, suggesting different priorities for budgeting, or discussing a particular transaction. The OpenBudgets.eu open-source framework and portal will integrate these components into a comprehensive portal. The framework will be deployed as a software-as-a-service for thousands of public administrations and millions of citizens. We will apply the project concept to three large-scale pilot scenarios in the domains participatory budgeting, data journalism and corruption prevention.