EIC COVID-19 uses Joinup solution to create a space for addressing challenges

The Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME), and in particular the team that is part of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Task Force, joined forces with our Joinup solution team to create a new platform EIC COVID-19 that entered a soft launch on 13 May. The content builds on the results of the EU vs Virus hackathon, which identified different challenges and is funded by the European Union via the European Innovation Council (EIC) programme. 

EIC COVID-19 challenge platform was created by the EIC Task Force as a follow up to the challenges presented at the EU vs Virus hackathon. The platform is a collaborative space where public and private procurers, local authorities and large corporates can post their challenges responding to the COVID-19 crisis and its impacts that have not yet been met by solutions from the market. Innovators, companies and researchers can respond to these challenges with their innovative solutions.

The team decided to reuse the Joinup solution to build the platform as it matched to a very large extent identified functionalities needed for the EIC COVID-19 Challenge platform, and has top notch performance and robust track-record of the past few years. Joinup is a collaborative space that facilitates the sharing and reuse of IT solutions developed for public administrations and provides freely reusable software under an open source licence. The team behind EIC COVID-19 also added the option of pledging to complete the idea. Thanks to this component, foundations, large corporates or any counterpart that has an interest in helping the cause can pledge financial support or services. 

After 3,5 weeks of hard work, the project was released in soft launch on 13 May and the team is now focused on migrating content from the hackathon platform. EIC COVID-19 Challenge platform will allow winners and runners-up from the hackathon to continue and expand their collaboration with each other, reaching innovative and fast solutions to all relevant challenges. After the coronavirus crisis, EIC COVID-19 challenge platform will be integrated as part of the EIC Community platform to offer challenge-based innovation possibilities to the large and expanding community of EIC beneficiaries and companies that achieved the Seal of Excellence. 

Overall, this project remains one of the best “synergies and efficiencies” examples in line with related Commission policy to avoid duplication and stimulate re-use of IT projects, whereas it brought Joinup platform as an ISA² candidate itself that could prove useful for other ISA² stakeholders. It was also a great example of how great teams working together can achieve results in record time even within a complex institutional framework. 

Next month we will share the first experience with the platform and potential improvements for Joinup that this project brought to light.