FTTE faqs

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Frequent Asks and Questions

What is FTTE about?

The Focused Technology Transfer Experiments (FTTE) funding instrument, focusing on one of the four defined verticals (Digitized Transport, Digitized Agriculture, Digitized Environment and Digitized Anything), will give the opportunity to form synergies, accelerate product orient projects and offer guidance towards successful commercialisation. It will be of short-term duration (9 months) and will consist of cross-border Pathfinder Application Experiments (PAEs) between two different entities from two different eligible countries (as per the eligibility criteria stated in section 3 of the Guide for Applicants). Within these types of experiments, one party transfers to the receiving partner a specific Hardware (HW) or Software (SW) technology in order to enable improved product or processes.

Who can apply to the FTTE Open Call?

The SMART4ALL cross border Experiments have to be proposed by a Consortium including the following type of applicants:

• Universities and other Academic Institutions.
• SME and Slightly Bigger Companies, as defined in the EU recommendation 2003/361. Slightly Bigger Companies are defined respectively as organisations with a staff headcount below 500 employees and a turnover below EUR 100M.
• System Integrators and/or Technology Providers, i.e. any type of organisation specialised in technology transfer or system integration, serving the needs of end-users, provided they can be categorised in one of the two previous types of beneficiaries.

Proposals can be submitted by any of the aforementioned type of entities, but the participation of, at least, one SME/Slightly Bigger Company is compulsory and should be the lead of the cross-border Pathfinder Application Experiments (PAEs).

The PAEs must be cross‐border, involving at least two independent entities from two different eligible countries.

The applicants involved in the consortia can NOT include any SMART4ALL partners.

Can two academic entities apply to FTTE Open Call?

No, a Technology Provider and Technology Receiver shall apply together as a consortium through a simple application form. The consortium composition can be as follows:

How do I find a partner to apply with?

Through the SMART4ALL Matchmaking & Partner Search Serviceyou have access to SMART4ALL ecosystem for:

• Matchmaking among technological partners as well as between technological and business parties, based on specific requirements, offerings and characteristics
• Partner search for SMART4ALL Open Calls.

Can I apply if I am a collaborator of one of the partners of the SMART4ALL consortium?

No, applicants shall not have any actual or/and potential conflict of interest with the SMART4ALL selection process and during the whole internship program. All cases of conflict of interest will be assessed case by case.

What is the technology and verticals behind SMART4ALL?

SMART4ALL focuses on CLEC, i.e. low-energy computing technologies applied in four SMART4ALL verticals with European leadership and strategic importance, including but not limited to the following SMART4ALL competence fields (see summarised table below, the complete one being available in the Guide for Applicants):

	SMART4ALL VERTICALS
S M A R T 4 A L L C O M P E T E N C E	DIGITIZED TRANSPORT	DIGITIZED ENVIRONMENT	DIGITIZED AGRICULTURE	DIGITIZED ANYTHING
	1. Green Transport 2. Smart mobility 3. Shared mobility 4. Robotics 5. New platforms for efficient supply-demand matchmaking 6. Automotive electronics 7. Autonomous vehicles 8. Connected vehicles 9. Streamlining transport using big data 10. Aeronautics and space applications 11. Transport and Logistics 12. City Transport Mapping	1. Smartbuilding 2. Smarthome 3. Critical Infrastructure monitoring 4. Smart Hospitals 5. Water Polution monitoring 6. Smartgrids 7. Energy management 8. Environment monitoring 9. Bio-diversity 10. Wild/migratory animals monitoring 11. Smart industry 12. Data processing & data visualization	1. Smart farming 2. AI inspired agriculture 3. Information based site specific applications 4. Demand driven, sustainable agriculture 5. Mobile plant, soil and environment sensors 6. Sensor networks – EU wide – cross-border 7. Field robotics and automation systems 8. UAV based agriculture and plant monitoring 9. Selective plant protection 10. Closed nutrient cycles 11. Agricultural decision support systems 12. Zero-energy food systems 13. Circular economy 14. Water, Energy and Food (WEF) efficiency 15. Revalorisation of agricultural waste	1. Human-machine Interaction 2. Digital Education 3. Industrial Automation 4. Machine Learning 5. Market Intelligence 6. Medical and Health Applications 7. Active & Healthy Ageing 8. Support for disabled persons 9. Cybersecurity 10. Data Mining and Big Data 11. Personal security 12. Additive Manufacturing (3D printing) 13. Augmented and Virtual Reality 14. Audio/Video Processing 15. Location-based Technologies 16. Web and Mobile Applications 17. Wireless Sensor Networks 18. Disaster management 19. Digital heritage 20. Telemedicine 21. Rehabilitation, wellness, fitness 22. E-commerce

Can my consortium apply if my proposal is about CLEC but our competence field is not included in the previous list?

Yes, you can apply, provided your proposal is focused on CLEC and you can prove it deals with one of the four verticals. As mentioned in the introductory sentence, the above list does not pretend to limit the competence fields, it is just a guiding list.

What countries are eligible for SMART4ALL?

For this FTTE Open Call, the following countries will be eligible:

• The Member States of the European Union and its Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) or
• Associated Countries to H2020
• The United Kingdom
• Any other South-East and Central Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Serbia) country not listed above but included in Annex A of the H2020 Work Programme

Additionally, since one of the goals of SMART4ALL is to support the digital transformation in mainly European countries underrepresented in European funding schemes, by means of cross-border experiments, consortia including at least one member from one of the SEE countries will be prioritized (except Greece) (see section 4 of the Guide for Applicants).

Can a consortium apply if the two entities are from the same eligible country?

No, FTTE and all the SMART4ALL experiment will be cross-border. In the case of FTTE, the two members of the applying consortia must be from two different countries within the list of eligible countries.

Can a consortium or a member of a consortium submit more than one proposal?

Any legal entity will be able to apply to the FTTE Open Call in as many consortia as wished, but it would only be selected as part of one consortium.

What does the application form to the FTTE Open Call include?

Proposals have to be submitted through the SMART4ALL microsite: https://smart4all.fundingbox.com

Applications submitted by any other means will not be considered for funding.

All Applicants will be asked to acknowledge the Informed consent form – in order to submit the full Application.

The proposals – submitted through the online platform – will include the following sections:

• Contact info
• Information on Partner no. 1:
• Information on Partner no. 2:
• FTTE key data
• Description of the FTTE
- (Scored) EXCELLENCE
- (Scored) IMPACT
- (Scored) IMPLEMENTATION
• Ethical issues, data protection and privacy
• Questions for statistical purposes
• Declaration of Honour and Absence of conflict of interest – acceptance
• Informed consent form – acceptance
• Processing of personal data – information clause acceptance

Additional material, which has not been included and specifically requested in the online application form, will not be considered for the evaluation of the proposals. Data not included in the proposal will not be taken into account. The SMART4ALL consortium makes its best effort to keep all provided data confidential; however, for the avoidance of doubt, the applicant is solely responsible to indicate its confidential information as such.

How long does it take to fill in the application?

In order to successfully fill in the application form you will probably need 1-2 days of writing, but we imagine that your team is composed of members specialized in their area of expertise you can divide and conquer. You’ll be able to add contributors to your application so that each team member can tackle their application area and you will be done quicker.

Considering specific character limits have been established in each section of the online application form, we encourage you to keep your application focused on the requested information keeping in mind the challenges and domains covered by this call.

We also recommend that you start the submission process quite before the deadline in order to avoid last minute circumstances.

When is the deadline for my application submission?

Applications must be submitted by the closing time and date published in the open call. Only proposals submitted before the deadline will be accepted. After the call closure no additions or changes to received proposals will be taken into account.

The deadline for this call is 15 September 2021 (17:00 CEST).

What is the selection process procedure and how long does it take?

The selection process is as follows:

General eligibility check:

A proposal will be considered eligible for evaluation if it meets the following conditions:

• the online proposal template has been completed as required.
• the proposal was submitted by the closing date as stated in the open call text.
• the eligibility criteria set out in section 3 were met.

Proposals that do not fulfil all conditions will not be considered for evaluation.

External evaluation

The proposals will be evaluated on the following criteria: EXCELLENCE, IMPACT and IMPLEMENTATION. See more details in section 4 of the Guide for Applicants.

Consensus phase

The consensus meeting will select the proposals to be awarded financial support.

Ethical Review

Before the Sub-Grant Agreement signature, the SMART4ALL Ethics Committee will review all selected FTTEs and, in particular, those highlighting upfront ethical issues (by participants or by evaluators).

Formal decision

Formal decision of the financial support is subject to signing the SMART4ALL funding agreement. In case any consortium partner of SMART4ALL refuses to sign the funding agreement the proposal will be excluded from financial support. Instead, the first proposal, taken from a Reserve List of the top ranked proposals initially rejected, will replace the excluded one.

Communication after the evaluation

Applicants will be informed on the results after the evaluation has been completed and the final decisions have been made. Applicants of proposals rejected will receive an email including the reasons for rejection.

Will all the evaluation criteria have the same weight?

Each evaluator will rank the application assigning a score from 0 to 5 for each criterion and produce an Individual Evaluation Report. The final score will be calculated as the weighted sum of the individual assessments provided by the Evaluators.

Applicants including at least 1 member of the SEE region (except Greece) in their consortium will be given 1 extra point to the overall score (obtained by adding the three individual criteria).

The final score on each criterion will be given by adding. Ties will be solved using the following criteria, in order:

• Number of partners from a SEE country in the consortium (except Greece).
• Impact average score.
• Implementation average score.

A ‘Ranking List’ will be created of the proposals with a score above the minimum threshold and passed to the Consensus phase.

What costs are eligible in FTTE?

The total financial support per FTTE includes the reimbursement of the following cost forms only:

• Costs of the staff involved in the FTTE.
• FTTE-related training and service activities for the industry partners.
• License and IPR agreement development.
• Necessary travel costs for mutual FTTE partner visits or FTTE presentations or demonstrations organized by SMART4ALL.
• Costs for providing open access to FTTE related scientific publications.
• Consumables and Equipment costs.

Note: In the case of for-profit legal entities, even if we provide a lump sum, you will need to include a budget in your application and the grant amount requested cannot exceed the 70% of the costs estimated for the execution of the project. Non-for-profit entities can request 100% of their costs.

Will each member of the consortium receive the funds we are requesting?

Each selected applicant will sign the Sub-Grant Agreement with the SMART4ALL consortium. The funds awarded under the Sub-Grant Agreement are provided directly from the funds of the European Project SMART4ALL, and are therefore funds owned by the European Commission.

As mentioned above, the consortia will be free to distribute the requested funds among the two partners, according to the resources’ distribution set up in the proposal.

However, the grant will be paid to the Leading Partner who will be responsible for its distribution within the consortium.

When will we receive the funds?

The SMART4ALL Financial Authority will make the payments to the Leading Partner of the FTTE based on deliverable submission and approval by the SMART4ALL Mentoring Committee:

Will we get a template of the requested deliverables?

Yes, the requested reports will be included in the Individual Mentoring Plan (IMP) that the cross-border FTTE selected will define at the beginning of the support programme, together with the mentors allocated. This document establishes the KPIs and the 3 Deliverables that will be considered when evaluating the SMART4ALL Experiments’ performance at the milestones.

Will a consortium getting funded by FTTE be able to apply to subsequent Open Calls from the SMART4ALL programme?

Yes, any consortium or any member of a consortium will be able to apply and get funding to subsequent SMART4ALL open calls, including other FTTE open calls.

The only restriction is that, in total, an organisation will be able to request an amount of EUR 100,000.

Does the ‘de minimis’ rule apply for FTTE? Is there any additional restriction about funding?

No, the ‘de minimis’ rule will not apply in FTTE nor any other SMART4ALL open call.

As per European Commission’s rules, financial support will not be awarded to individual legal entities that have already received more than EUR 100,000 via open calls (Financial Support to Third Parties = FSTP = cascade funding) from H2020 I4MS (https://i4ms.eu/) and SAE (https://smartanythingeverywhere.eu/) projects.

In case of funding received, but under the mentioned threshold (EUR 100,000) from abovementioned sources applicants are expected to modify their budget accordingly, if possible, considering the project and attributed tasks, respecting the no "double funding rule" (“Double funding” means the situation where the same costs for the same activity are funded twice through the use of public funds. It is a fundamental principle underpinning the rules for public expenditure in the EU that no costs for the same activity can be funded twice from the EU budget. More on this you can find under “Financial guidelines for applicants”).

This limited amount does not include any EC contribution that your organisation receives or has received within an EU-funded project (within FP7 or H2020) as a beneficiary. Participation as a beneficiary within EU-funded projects does not affect the participation in SMART4ALL open calls. For clarification, please contact the relevant department in your organisation.

What type of support will be available to prepare the application?

The Guide for Applicants is the main reference document. It provides detailed information about the requirements of the evaluation and selection process.

If you still have any doubts regarding our Open Call process, feel free to get in touch with us:

• For questions on the Open Call requirements, ask your question in the Helpdesk space of SMART4ALL Community. For technical questions, please visit the SMART4ALL Helpdesk.
• View the recorded webinars and training courses here. There will be additional webinars organised which will be advertised on the main project website and via our social media channels.
• Send us an email to the following address: helpdesk@smart4all-project.eu
• Visit the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). You can find the FAQs in your local language here.

What is the schedule of the Open Call and Evaluation phases?

Description	Indicative Dates
Second FTTE Open Call launch	15 June 2021 at 00:00 CEST
Second FTTE Open Call deadline	15 September 2021 at 17:00 CEST
Second FTTE Open Call evaluation and selection	September-October 2021
Consensus Meeting	October 2021
Communication of Results	November 2021
Start of Experiment	Start of December 2021
End of Experiment	End of December 2021