The European Cloud Initiative, entailing plans for a European Open Science Cloud and an underpinning European Data Infrastructure (EDI), represents a vision to ultimately strengthen EU’s competitiveness in digital technologies and in innovation and to enable users and society at large to reap the benefits of datadriven science ( See the Communication of the European Commission on the European Cloud Initiative, April 2016).

 

Our goal is to create a European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) to make science more efficient and productive and let millions of researchers share and analyse research data in a trusted environment across technologies, disciplines and borders.
Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.

 

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) will offer Europe’s 1.7 million researchers and 70 million science and technology professionals a virtual environment with free at the point of use, open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines. EOSC will furthermore provide a secure environment where privacy and data protection are guaranteed by design, based on recognised standards, and where users can be confident concerning data security and liability risks. EUDAT partner organisations will be fundamental to the realisation of this EOSC and many of them have been involved in pilot projects, tasked with the responsibility to design the EOSC starting from January 2017.

With this regard, on 10 October 2016, the High Level Expert Group on the European Open Science Cloud (HLEG-EOSC) released its report “Realising the European Open Science Cloud”. The report, including 15 specific recommendations on the preparatory phase for designing the European Open Science Cloud covering Policy, Governance and Implementation, will guide the actors of the European Data Infrastructure, European Cloud Initiative and the European Open Science Cloud Pilot.

 

More on EUDAT and the EOSC