SpartaNews

The Road after SPARTA DAY #3

25th May 2020

One of the main goals of the Roadmap Committee is to develop and implement a common European cybersecurity research and innovation (R&I) roadmap.

The roadmap received a positive review during the SPARTA Days in Brussels. Generally, the review has evaluated SPARTA’s efforts to become the main guideline for European decision-makers and the European Commission (EC) with regard to defining and supporting future projects and investments in cybersecurity. Our vision of this guideline embodies a clear mission that directs concrete research and innovation projects toward solving global challenges (e.g., with respect to the sustainability agenda of the EU and the United Nations comprising 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), which are determined to protect our planet from degradation). Consequently, by defining the SPARTA mission, we aim to bridge the gap between flexible, yet, isolated R&I challenges that will emerge in the future and the broad, yet, un actionable directions (i.e., SDGs).

The SPARTA mission aims to shape the cybersecurity technologies required to establish and maintain a European Strategic Digital Autonomy. In this regard, the SPARTA roadmap needs to become a guideline that provides answers to following key questions:

  1. Which technologies and challenges are vital to accomplishing the SPARTA mission in the long run?
  2. Which actions/instruments will allow us to maintain and direct the focus of the roadmap towards reaching the SPARTA mission in the long run (e.g., through continuous feedback)?

In an attempt to answer these questions, the WP3 workshop during the SPARTA Week in Brussels, first, has helped the Roadmap Committee to propagate the SPARTA Roadmap’s contents and second, and more importantly, to collect feedback focused on selected elements of the roadmap. In fact, involved Spartans have vigorously provided feedback on the three important aspects that affect the previous efforts and present state of the SPARTA Roadmap. The collected feedback focuses on the current state and contents of the SPARTA Roadmap, its design and input gathering process, and the structure of effectiveness of the applied tools and strategies to collect and represent the roadmap. Together with the feedback from the external reviewers, these points are currently under review and evaluation. The Roadmap Committee takes the collected feedback seriously and will put high emphasis on addressing the respective points in the future.

  • News and Next Steps

    The Roadmap Committee plans to touch base with other pilots in regard to synchronizing the individual roadmapping activities. We believe that the roadmap gains value through collaboration and, in the long run, all pilots would benefit from united efforts. Relevant points concern the mission, guidelines and strategies, instruments, and the representation of the respective roadmaps. Our goal is to identify potential overlaps and differences among the pilots, and the value of our previous roadmapping efforts to other pilots. We believe, these points will eventually help us to understand how to implement common strategies in order to derive the best result for all parties.