<< Background >>Digital Transformation describes a staggering task for our society and access to relevant knowledge is limited. The increasing demand for technical and methodological expertise in combination with domain knowledge significantly impacts the European job market. In this vein, a new job description as well as a new string of education emerged: Data Science. As access to expertise in Data Science is sparse, all over Europe qualified volunteers are organized as regional or national initiatives to address the fact that social organizations in Europe do not have sufficient access to relevant knowledge and tools in order to adequately address Digital Transformation. Organized in regional or national teams, volunteers support social organizations to make use of their data by connecting them with volunteer data scientists and analysts. This idea goes back to the initiative “Data Science for Social Good”, founded in Chicago, and inspired regional experts in Europe to organize similar initiatives in their region. Leading initiatives in Europe are Data Science for Social Good (Germany, UK and Portugal), Data for Good (Denmark, France, Poland and Spain) and Correlaid (Germany and France). Although a few initiatives in Europe do already exist, every initiative is individually organized and there are no European open resources comprising workflows and best practices for Data for Good initiatives. Groups are mostly organized in local or national heterogenous teams and are established by individual initiatives. Due to the fact that the demand for expert knowledge in the field of Data Science has been increasing, students and professionals need access to target group specific courses, and higher education institutions need access to customized learning material that takes into account different scientific backgrounds. Project EPSILON addresses the needs of both European Data for Good initiatives and HE institutions. Together with a leading European initiative, Data Science for Social Good Portugal, we will design tailored workflows and tools for European initiatives. We will set up a European Knowledge Platform and initiate a new Data for Good initiative in Lithuania. The gained experience and knowledge will be transformed into target group specific learning material for higher education students, teachers and alumni. Project design and intended outputs clearly align with the long-term education goals of the European Union, e.g. as codified in the Digital Education Action Plan for 2021-2027. As the EU is foreseen to play a more active role in supporting Member States and the education and training sector with tools, frameworks, guidance, technical expertise and research, the outputs to be developed within EPSILON project could be a small, but significant component for reaching this goal.<< Objectives >>By implementing project EPSILON, we want to achieve that multi-disciplinary knowledge in the field of data science applied to social good is transferred into innovative learning material for European HE institutions. In order to win relevant knowledge, we support European voluntary Data for Good initiatives and transfer the gained know-how into target group specific learning resources for an emerging field of education. Also, our project addresses an existing gap in Europe. Up to now, data enthusiasts do not have access to open resources containing best practices and workflows for Data for Good associations. Therefore, we work together with data enthusiasts of Higher education institutions and Data for Good associations to provide customized open resources for European data enthusiasts who provide voluntary support to social good institutions. Specifically, we plan to support Data for Good initiatives in Europe and build a European Knowledge Platform. Based on the generated knowledge, we create workflows and necessary tools and we also initiate a new Data for Good initiative in Lithuania. Moreover, the gained knowledge will be transferred to create innovative and customized learning material in the emerging field of data science. The goal is to provide target-group specific learning material that can be used by both institutions of higher education as well as interested data enthusiasts. Due to the fact, that European data enthusiasts do not have open access to relevant knowledge-based resources, we will bridge this gap and develop an open access platform. The planned platform describes an innovative approach to provide relevant knowledge for European data enthusiasts. We plan to provide customized workflows for efficient internal processes that are relevant for every voluntary team. Via this platform, every European initiative gets access to best practices, analytics tools and customized learning material. The goal is to provide organizational support for every European initiative. Furthermore, we lower the barriers for new social data science initiatives all over Europe and provide guidance for interested data scientists. We also organize a new voluntary initiative in Lithuania. The objective is to increase visibility of voluntary data science for social good and that every country in Europe gets access to high quality data science services.<< Implementation >>In order to achieve the planned objectives, several activities are planned for the next three years. To ensure an adequate agile project management, we organize regular virtual meetings with project members for the full period to ensure fruitful internal communication and knowledge transfer. Additionally, we implement four Transnational Project Meetings. EPSILON project is structured into four coherent building blocks (Project Results 1-4). Progress in each Project Result will be discussed face-to-face at Transnational Meetings. One of the goals of each meeting is to transfer the co-created knowledge of each building block into target-group specific learning material. Also, these meetings are necessary to validate the quality of the material with all consortium partners. The meetings are scheduled in the following order: Germany, Portugal, Cyprus and Lithuania. Also, we plan 4 Multiplier Events in each of the participating countries in order to validate the results of each project component with the relevant target group and to gain more knowledge in social impact of data science. For these activities, we invite external experts to assess and validate the co-created results. Due to the fact, that each building block calls for different expertise, these activities are planned along the lines of the project agenda, whereas each activity takes place in the country that leads the respective Project Result. To provide practical learning opportunities in this specific field and validate our training materials, we plan two Learning, Teaching and Training Activities (LTTA). The first activity takes place in Portugal and addresses international higher education students. The second activity takes place in Germany and addresses data enthusiasts and practitioners. The goal is to test the customized project results with relevant target groups. We will collect valuable feedback to finalize the results of our project.<< Results >>Project EPSILON results in innovative learning material for HE institutions. We work together with data enthusiasts with Higher Education background and provide target-group specific learning material. The customized learning material will be available for HE students, teachers, and other interested professionals. The generated learning components will be applicable to different disciplines and different levels (modular design). Also, we expect that project EPSILON also impacts the organization of European voluntary Data for Good initiatives. We will provide open-access workflows, business knowledge and intelligence tools to voluntary Data for Good initiatives. Every European initiative gets access to efficient customized workflows and standardized analytic tools. We expect that our results impact the daily work of each team and that we enable each squad to spend more time on their original mission: Support European social good institutions in the field of digital transformation. We also expect to support a sustainable European knowledge exchange between countries and teams. This aspect is rather crucial since we expect our project to strengthen the sustainability of European voluntary initiatives, e.g. by providing a platform which allows for a European knowledge management. Based on the created material, we will initiate and train a new Data for Good team in Lithuania. Together with university of Vilnius we will recruit volunteers and experts in Lithuania and introduce this team to the European eco system of Data for Good. This will be the very first Data for Good project in Lithuania and we expect that the generated knowledge and learning material provides guidance for interested data scientists and lowers the barriers for starting new voluntary projects all over Europe.

Kompetenzaufbau für eine wirkungsorientierte Steuerung in kleinen und mittleren KommunenKoWiSt (Kompetenzaufbau für eine wirkungsorientierte Steuerung - Competence Building for Impact Oriented Management) is a cooperation between Bern University of Applied Science, the European Academy of Bolzano EURAC (IT), Carinthia University of Applied Science (AT), Hochschule Harz - University of Applied Science (DE) and Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice (SK). The main objective of this project is to enforce development of small and medium-sized municipalities, particularly in regions with weak socio-economic structures. Therefore, KoWiSt will help to enhance the competencies of civil servants and local politicians in management and controlling. It consists of an Open Education Ressource Plattform (OER) and a concept of teaching and learning. The OER is built on experiences of several best-practice municipalities and will be used for courses with students of public management and for training of public servants and local politicians.KoWiSt shows best-practice approaches for managing future development in small and medium-sized municipalities. Beside the strategic goals, the OER provides models that explain the process from input and governmental action up to impacts in local development. With experiences from different countries, comparative discussions about the influence of different institutional settings and limits of management will be possible. The project should be a starting point for the Europeanisation of education and training for public services. The network between small and medium-sized municipalities should be enlarged by a resulting knowledge alliance with other European countries.

Knowledge, skills and innovation are the indispensable foundation of sustainable development. European agricultural and rural development policies have a long-standing record of stimulating innovation, moreover, sharing knowledge within networks speeds the process of adoption of innovations. Given these preliminary considerations, the first challenge of FARM project is to boost knowledge and technology transfer in the agricultural sector. The possibility to increase the level of information available to ARD (Agriculture and Rural Development) about new technologies is directly linked to sectorial investments, economic and environmental efficiency and sustainability, food healthiness and safety, ability to compete in the international market area. The support in agriculture and rural development (ARD) remains a vital component for economic, social and environmental sustainability. The ARD faces the challenge in terms of sustainable management of natural resources, depopulation and contributing towards the economic development. The scientific development complements this challenge by focusing on knowledge share and fostering the technology and innovations in ARD. According to economic theory and practice, the formation and transfer of knowledge form a basis of economic development. Moreover, although direct demand for knowledge is today lower than in the past, economic literature confirms the importance of wide networking, in terms of diversification and number of subjects, for the introduction of new technologies in the agro-food sector (Muscio et al., 2017). There is still a huge gap in European agriculture concerning technological development and organization. Consequently, in a vast majority of European countries and regions, especially those of southern Europe, a well-developed sphere of formation and transfer of knowledge is required (CAPReform.EU, 2012). E2020 in ARD fosters innovation, cooperation, and development of a knowledge base in rural areas, enhancing farm viability and competitiveness of all types of agriculture in all regions and promoting innovative farm technologies and sustainable management (https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/ruraldevelopment- 2014-2020_en). The establishment of professional training programs for ARD stakeholders through educational institutions is desperately needed. In that context FARM project is focused on innovative approaches to knowledge exchange that will be taking advantage of new digital technologies, and will be based on synergies between information management and communication for development. Its objective is to contribute to ARD by bringing relevant expertise and resources across the international community into a more coherent and systematic approach. In order to contribute to the improvement in ARD, FARM project defines four intellectual outputs for introduction, popularization and application of the current ICT DSS tools in ARD, but also designing and developing the prototypes of two new tools as well as training course materials in ARD based on the DSS recognized and with a focus on green skills.The scope of the project is on an systematic overview of existing ICT DSS tools in ARD that support crop farming, precision livestock farming, climate and quality control and farm management. A special focus should be on spatial DSS because spatial information is indispensable in the agricultural sector, and regional planning in general. Most information that is needed for problems of rural development are focused on geo-located points, lines, places, areas or other entities. Therefore, software services for the collection, analysis and visualistaion of spatial data can effectively support decision-making processes among different stakeholders. Based on such a systematically derived overview, existing gaps will be identified and filled by developing new training materials as well as two DSS prototypes for specific purposes referring to the FARM focus. The project activities are aimed at and tailored according to the needs of the target group such as ARD experts, trainers and policy makers, researchers, academic staff, students, farmers, development practitioners, as well skilled and unskilled adult and other members of vulnerable groups. FARM resembles a unique project which is innovative in its nature with a direct impact on linking the HE and ARD and contributing to the development of rural areas and socio-economic prosperity. The project goals are achieved through the interaction of five European partners from 5 European countries. Local rural businesses are also behind the project, which create a practical framework for feasibility and sustainability.

The efficiency of the higher educational systems largely rely on institutional support from the research support staff (legal, financial, ethical, impact oriented, managerial, and administrative) in all phases: pre-award/preparatory, award, post-award/implementation phase and post-implementation phase (review and assessment). Research support structures are one of the key factors influencing the success or failure of institutions and researchers participating in competitive European, non-European and national project where types of activities range from research, development, innovation, demonstration, building capacities, raising awareness, coordination, support and similar (R&D&I) funding programmes. But the available educational programmes in the field of project management and research administration comply only in limited extent with competences and knowledge needed by support staff and the need for extensive additional training in this field is evident. ADMIN project addresses this issue through providing upgrade of professional competences of research administrator’s staff by elaborating a project toolkit in project management (IO1) with an aspect on ethics and enhancing the soft communication skills as well as providing a training in this field. Additionally, ADMIN develops a self-study learning tool “Alone in the office” in a form of video material (IO2). In order to connect the various stakeholders and strengthen the linkages between the higher educations and the economy, ADMIN creates a Baseline study on knowledge transfer market (IO3). ADMIN’s outcomes will be published on the EPALE and the partners’ websites.The main objective of the project is to contribute to capacity building of research support staff and enhancing the prospect for R&I projects and initiatives in European funding schemes. The second objective is to strengthen and expand the network of research support staff across project partner countries and beyond so as to allow free flow of information, knowledge and exchange of best practices hence increasing the prospects for excellence in research administration. The aim is to boost the capacities of research administrators by improving their performance, highlighting the visibility of their work and outcomes and strengthening relations with academic/scientific staff. The target groups are early stage research administrators who are faced to the challenge to respond to everyday tasks on R&I projects, academic staff, stakeholders and students.

ERASMI will enable the diverse stakeholder groups in the field of migration and refugee inclusion work (amongst them e.g. community administration, public and private migrant support organisations, NGOs, VET, HEI, business organisations, volunteer groups etc.) to professionalise their staff and their organisations in order to effectuate their impact on social inclusion and will empower them to build strong multi-actor networks developing and implementing regional action plans for social inclusion of migrants and refugees.Neither the topic of migration nor the debate about it is any new – but it has agitated Europe since the climax of the so-called refugee crisis in 2015 without any sign of easing in the discussion so far. The often-populist discourse lacks rational and conceals the view on the actual facts. In the current global context, our ability to effectively integrate refugees into new host communities remains a major challenge and political priority. Building on the framework of EU-Policies and the European Agenda on Migration, the actual inclusion work is a regional social task, that cannot be a single player tournament for administration and politics. It needs to be challenged involving all relevant regional stakeholders and actors. In fact it is a regional, cross-sectional, multidimensional and multi-actor challenge - with an extraordinary high level of complexity.Municipalities already understand this and react with strategic approaches towards social inclusion. But aspiration differs from reality in a dramatic way. Yet despite the willingness of communities, a recent study reveals that innovative participation concepts and multi-stakeholder-approaches are still the exception rather than the rule (Success factors of Integration on municipal level - Friedrich Ebert Stiftung 2017).Based on our work in previous projects and our involvement in a large number of inclusion initiatives, we experience a strong demand for VET-training and learning opportunities for the staff members of inclusion actors and for organisational development. Therefore, we will build on the critical success factors for inclusion of migrants and refugees (and the corresponding skills needed) by providing best practice approaches and by developing E- and Peer-Learning Opportunities for the relevant actors (and their staff) in the field of migrant support in order to effectively equip them with the skills needed to solve complex multi-actor challenges and by building strong multi-actor networks working on concrete regional action plans for social inclusion. Specifically we will: 1-Provide actors with best practice (collaboration) blueprints in the field of multi-actor migrants and refugee inclusion (IO1)2-Develop an innovative learning framework and toolkit (IO2) empowering actors to enhance the impact of their social work. 3-Enable and empower actors to improve collaborative planning and coordination of education activities in Interagency Networks with regional action plans for social inclusion (IO3)4-To ensure wide and free access, the framework and the documented processes and lessons learned from the networks will be shared on our interactive knowledge exchange platform as OERs (IO4)In doing so, the project addresses the following needs of our target groups and will create sustainable impact for them: a) Actors / stakeholders in the field of migrant and refugee inclusion will gain a comprehensive understanding of the importance of collaboration and the tools and methods needed to establish regional networks and to develop and implement action plans for inclusion.b) Social development policy makers and funders will identify high performing best practice strategies and find tangible ways to support their uptake at national or international level.c) Project partners will acquire new strategies, tools and methods for improving the effectiveness of integration and social inclusion. They will improve their own competences in knowledge sharing and strategic relationship building and have a clear understanding of how to sustain and grow the project in the long term.d) Refugees / migrants will indirectly profit from the regional cooperation, the uptake of professionalism as well as the synergies and released resources of actors - leading to a faster and deeper inclusion.By implementing this approach in countries, that are strongly affected by inward migration (Germany, Ireland, Italy) and in Turkey, being the first reception and transit country for many refugees and migrants and by disseminating the ERASMI resources across Europe, the project makes a notable contribution to improve the inclusion of the most vulnerable in society. The project is important because we need to ensure communities are strengthened by migration and not undermined by marginalization or radicalization. We believe this can be achieved best, through empowering those who already understand this importance and by building strong networks.