NGI0 Consortium to award grants worth 5.6 million euro to open internet projects that promote inclusivity, privacy, interoperability, and data protection

NLnet Foundation, on Saturday, announced that they are now taking in submissions for project proposals for projects that will deliver “potential break-through contributions to the open internet”. These project will be judged on their technical merits, strategic relevance to the Next Generation Internet and overall value for money. For this, they have created separate themes such as NGI Zero PET and NGI Zero Discovery under which you can list your projects.

The foundation will be investing 5.6 million euro on small to medium-size R&D grants towards improving search and discovery and privacy and trust enhancing technologies from 2018 to 2021. They are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 euros, with the chances to scale them up if there is proven potential. Deadline for submitting these proposals is February 1st, 2019 12:00 CET.

NLnet Foundation supports the open internet and the privacy and security of internet users. The foundation helps independent organizations and people that contribute to an open information society by providing them microgrants, advice, and access to a global network.

Next Generation Internet (NGI): Creating open, trustworthy, and reliable internet for all

The European Commission launched the NGI initiative in 2016 aiming to make the internet an interoperable platform ecosystem. This future internet will respect human and societal values such as openness, inclusivity, transparency, privacy, cooperation, and protection of data.

NGI wants to make the internet more human-centric while also driving the adoption of advanced concepts and methodologies in domains such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, interactive technologies, and more.

To achieve these goals NLnet has launched projects like NGI Zero Discovery and NGI Zero Privacy and Trust Enhancing Technologies (PET).

NGI Zero Discovery aims to provide individual researchers and developers an agile, effective, and low-threshold funding mechanism. This project will help researchers and developers bring in new ideas that contribute to the establishment of the Next Generation Internet. These new projects will be made available as free/libre/open source software.

NGI Zero PET is the sister project of NGI Zero Discovery. The objective of this project is to equip people with new technologies that will provide them better privacy.

NLnet on their website said these investments are for helping researchers and developers towards creating an open internet:

“Trust is one of the key drivers for the Next Generation Internet, and an adequate level of privacy is a non-negotiable requirement for that. We want to assist independent researchers and developers to create powerful new technology and to help them put it in the hands of future generations as building blocks for a fair and democratic society and an open economy that benefits all.”

To read more, check out the NLnet Foundation’s official website.

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