Background

The current talks with DG Enterprise have led to a strong need to develop an internal review procedure for the project proposal of the CEN WSLT proposals for funding. It was requested to provide a pre-evaluated and ranked list of proposals. As this task has been not done in the past, we need to discuss a new practice. Several challenges arise:

• Neutrality: As we cannot pay external experts, we need to do an internal review, done also by people who compete with their proposals.
• Timeline: We have a very tight schedule, we need to have proposals prepared by the April meeting and review them after that in a short period (2-3 weeks).
• Consensus: The decision should be - as any process in the CEN WS - based on consensus. We need to define a procedure how to achieve this.

How to achieve all this?

General procedure

This procedure would be a possible procedure for next year (this year follows below).

1. Pre-proposals: In a first phase, the WS should have a call for pre-proposals for discussion in the workshop - Pre-proposals should be provided by mid-December
2. Presentation: The presentations of all pre-proposals followed by first feedback and maybe synergies should be discussed in the January workshop
3. Proposals: should be provided by mid February
4. Selection of review team: Based on the proposals, a review team should together with the chairs develop a first version of the evaluation to be distributed 4 weeks before the April workshop and to be presented and discussed at the April workshop.
5. Feedback and consensus: The workshop should agree on the list of proposals and achieve consensus
6. Finalization and submission: to DG Enterprise

Criteria (criteria in italics have been provided by DG Enterprise):

• Relevance and strategic alignment
  • Clear relevance to the objectives of the work programme
  • Alignment to workshop and policies: How are the proposals aligned with the CEN workshop strategy / Business plan and to relevant European policies?
  • Maturity: Does the proposal build on mature experiences (e.g., validated specifications, project developments)

• Feasibility
  • Target group: Does the proposal address a sufficiently large audience
  • Stakeholders' interest and involvement; does the proposal provide suggestions for experts and organizations to be involved; have they expressed their interest?
  • Resources: Is the planning of the proposal feasible in terms of resources and management
  • Additional Resources: Does the proposal provide evidence that voluntary, non-paid experts will contribute?

• Clarity
  • Clear rationale and justification
  • High quality of the description of the work plan and of the expected deliverables + indicators

• Recommendations
  • Summary of review: A short paragraph summarizing the review
  • Improvement recommendations: A description of improvement comments from the reviewers regarding the critiera above

Proposal review

We have received 4 proposals which all seem to be interesting and in line with the workshops goals as well as the ICT standards work programme by the EC. For all reviewers:

Please read carefully through the proposals* Please answer the questions below

• Please provide a short statement 10 days days before the WS April meetingThanks for contributing to the workshops's work to assure the quality of the proposals.

Questions for the reviewers:

• Relevance and strategic alignment
  • Is the proposal relevant?
  • Does the proposal clearly relate to the ICT work programme?
  • Does the proposal build on mature experiences (e.g., validated specifications, project developments)

Feasibility

• Target group: Does the proposal address a sufficiently large audience
• Stakeholders' interest and involvement; does the proposal provide suggestions for experts and organizations to be involved; have they expressed their interest?
• Resources: Is the planning of the proposal feasible in terms of resources and management
• Additional Resources: Does the proposal provide evidence that voluntary, non-paid experts will contribute?

• Clarity
  • Is the proposal justified, is the argumentation 7 reasoning clear?
  • Are the deliverables clear, are the indicators appropriate?

• Recommendations
  • Please provde a short summary,
  • State clear Improvement recommendations, what should be done to make the proposal better?