InDiCo- Global Third Open Call | Indico Global Grants

InDiCo-Global will provide € 1.000.000 of funding to promote European digital/ICT standards in target countries/regions (African Union, China, Eastern Partnership, India, Latin America and Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Western Balkans), building bridges across technical communities. Through three open calls, this funding will enable the specialists to promote the European Standardisation System (ESS) and European standards in partner countries/regions for select ICT/digital technologies, thereby creating opportunities for capacity building as well as strengthening and promoting Europe’s position and vision in global standardisation initiatives.

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The 3rd Open Call is an extended Open Call, running from June 2025 up until 6 months before the end of the project or until all call topics have been awarded.

Open Call Timing

Call Launch: 16 June 2025

Call Closure: June 2026

3rd Open Call Topics

This call includes two types of eligible topics:

Training for staff of non-EU/EFTA standards bodies (e.g., National Standards Organization)
Landscaping Studies

Please refer to the topic descriptions below for details.

Training for staff of non-EU/EFTA standards bodies (e.g., National Standards Organization)

The third InDiCo-Global Open Call provides National Standards Organisations (NSOs) or equivalent from target geographies (India, Latin America and Caribbean, Southeast Asia, African Union, Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership) and European Union/EEA NSOs with the possibility to apply to organise training programmes for the benefit of staff of NSOs in the target regions. Training is expected to cover topics related to standardisation management, capacity building etc. rather than training on the technical subject matter of standards.

Applications must come directly from an NSO and a total of five training programmes will be funded. Funding will be awarded on a first come-first served basis, while prioritising coverage of as many target regions as possible.

The training programme shall sponsor one or more experts in standardisation to develop a training course in cooperation with and for the benefit of the target NSO, and to travel to the target NSO for its delivery. Each training programme project shall provide all slides together with diagrams, text, tables as relevant, all in editable format. InDiCo-Global partners shall receive full rights to exploit, modify, update, publish, transfer and sub-license all the materials provided.

Applications shall identify:

The target NSO(s) being the beneficiariy(ies) of the training programme
A European Union/EEA NSO related to the proposal
The name(s) of the expert(s) who will prepare and deliver the training programme
The topics and subjects to be covered as part of the training programme.

The maximum grant amount for each training programme is €20 000 (see eligible costs section). Applicants can apply to develop and deliver more than one training programme or can apply to deliver the same programme more than once, within the limits of the maximum amount of funding that a beneficiary can receive (€50 000).

Landscaping Studies

InDiCo-Global also invites proposals to develop landscaping studies of the ICT standardisation and regulatory sectors of specific countries or regions. Some of these studies can be updates of existing work done under a previous project (InDiCo Standards) during the timeframe of 2019-2022, for which the base material will be supplied.

Proposals are invited to provide the following:

A briefing for each of the above studies is available behind at the links above. The existing landscaping studies to be updated are available for applicants upon request. Each study shall result in a document together with diagrams, slides, tables as relevant, all in editable format. InDiCo-Global partners shall receive full rights to exploit, modify, update, publish, transfer and sub-license all the materials provided.

One application for each study will be awarded, on a first-come-first-served basis for eligible applicants having passed evaluation criteria.

The maximum grant amount for each of the updated studies is €15 000, while the maximum grant amount for each of the new studies is €15 000 or €30 000 according to the study. See details in the Eligible Costs section

Open Call for Application Timing

InDiCo-Global will run a set of 3 Open Calls. The 3rd InDiCo-Global Open Call is an extended Open Call, running from June 2025 up until 6 months before the end of the project (June 2026) or earlier if all projects are awarded.

In this call, applications will be evaluated upon submission. Applicants can expect to wait at least 30 days after their submission before being notified.

InDiCo-Global will terminate on 31 December 2026. Proposed projects should not plan to continue beyond October 2026, in order to leave sufficient time for reporting.

Evaluation Process

Each proposal received through the InDiCo-Global grants platform will be screened for eligibility. Should the proposal comply with the criteria indicated herein, applicants will receive notification of the proposal's eligibility (label "eligible"). Rejected applications will be labelled as "non eligible".

After being deemed eligible, proposals will be sent to the evaluation phase through the InDiCo-Global External Pool of Evaluators, scored, and ranked for funding (labelled as "in evaluation"). Each proposal is evaluated by two members of the External Pool of Evaluators, and after reaching a consensus, the evaluation undergoes a quality check by a third member of the pool. The peer-review phase will last for about 30 days. Should the proposal pass the evaluation phase, it will undergo a final scrutiny check of the InDiCo-Global's Steering Committee to minimise potential issues and conflicts of interest.

Applications that will receive a positive evaluation will be selected on a first-come-first-served basis until all call topics have been awarded. This page will be updated to indicate the remaining call topics which can be applied for.

If your proposal is retained for funding, upon notification, you will be provided with the information and instructions to prepare and sign the contract for the funding. Please note that a deadline of 10 business days from notification will be applied to confirm your intention to take up the contract to enable the funds to be reallocated to other successful applicants.

Please note that two EPE members independently evaluate each application and undergo quality control by a third member of the pool after a consensus is reached to guarantee maximum fairness and transparency. As the EPE are highly skilled experts whose qualifications are assessed through an open call process, their decision is binding, and any redress requests or complaints will be dealt with strictly in relation to the procedural aspects of the evaluation and not on the merits of the scientific or technical judgement of the experts.

Who can receive financial support?

Potential applicants to InDiCo-Global’s Open Calls must be legal entities based in European Union Member States and Associate Countries or in the countries within the targeted geographies of InDiCo-Global, excluding China and Belarus.

To avoid double-funding, any proposed activities already financed through other means or instruments will be rejected. However, co-funding of the submitted proposal is permissible.

For the training programme topics in this call, applications must come directly from a National Standardisation Organisation from one of the targeted regions, or from an EU/EEA country.

Eligible Costs

Financial Limit:

Max funding per beneficiary: €50 000
Max funding per training programme €20 .000
Max funding for the landscaping studies covering S.E. Asia and African Union: €30 000
Max funding for each other landscaping study: €15 000

Eligible costs that will be reimbursed are:

Expert’s time
travel costs (calculate travel costs on the EC website)
subsistence costs (check EU's subsistence and hotel ceiling here);
other direct costs (e.g., hosting costs, dissemination costs)

The exact amount to be funded will be calculated on the basis of the submitted costs by the Proposing Organisation. Funding will adopt the lump sum principle, meaning that once costs are agreed upon, the beneficiary does not have to further justify spending. Funding will, in most cases, come in two payments: a pre-financing provided at the start of the project and a final payment to be made upon completion of the project, subject to acceptance of deliverables/milestones by the InDiCo-Global project team. The balance between pre-financing and final payment will depend on the funds needed for the implementation of the project. For proposals spanning over a long period, further pre-financing during execution may be considered.

Evaluation Criteria

The initial eligibility screening will be undertaken by the Consortium to assess compliance with the call. Proposals that are ineligible for any reason or that do not meet the call criteria will be identified as such, and the applicant will be notified. The consortium will consolidate all eligible proposals and submit them to the external evaluators (selected from the External Pool of Evaluators – EPE) to undertake the formal evaluation.

Applications that will receive a positive evaluation will be selected on a first-come-first-served basis until all call topics have been awarded.

Formal evaluation will include a thorough review of each of the proposals. Evaluations (for each proposal) will be performed using the following 4-criteria principle (score 1 to 10):

Criterion 1: Impact and alignment with the call – Soundness of the proposal and foreseen impact in alignment with the call (weight: 30%);
Criterion 2: Excellence – Technical excellence & relevance of the activities proposed (weight: 30%);
Criterion 3: Capacity – Experience and qualifications of the applicant (s) (weight: 20%);
Criterion 4: Resources – Economics of the proposal (weight: 20%).

Furthermore, the assessment of the above criteria will be complemented by the following sub-criteria, which are not mandatory but may boost the score for the criterion under consideration:

Proven capacity and/or relevance in the chosen area;
Involvement of societal stakeholders;
Inclusion of the applicant organisation in the ICT standardisation ecosystem in the target country;
Participation in relevant international and/or global standards development organisations;

The proposal’s final score will be automatically determined by averaging scores from the various evaluators and then applying a weighting process among the four criteria as per the percentages indicated above.

In case of:

A tie between 2 or more proposals, the proposal received first will be selected (the “time stamp” of submission will be the reference).
The evaluation of the Open Calls will ensure impartiality and applicants selected for funding have to guarantee that no conflicts of interest exist.

Proposals are encouraged to exhibit consideration for social equality and inclusiveness.

For more info about the InDiCo-Global Third Open Call, please contact info@indico-global-grants.eu and watch the recording of the first information session here.