eNVENTORY · European eInfrastructures Observatory

Within the EARNEST foresight study, a prelude but systematic benchmarking undertaking was conducted, with the spotlight on the Research and Education Networking Infrastructures that resulted to a framework called Research and Education Development Index – REDI, as a first step of measuring the progress of eInfrastructures. This activity stimulated substantial interest within the eInfrastructures community as well as an extended group of stakeholders, including the European Parliament.Alongside, the issue of benchmarking has been raised high in the EC policy agenda in several recent occasions as vital for assessing the impact of eInfrastructures at EU level and beyond, with the INFRA-2010-3.3 topic materializing policy into specific call-for-action.Responding to this, the eNVENTORY project suggests the formation of a European eInfrastructures Observatory, a single-entry-point and one-stop-shop of a standardised database, accessible via an advanced web platform and capable of representing multiple primary and convoluted indicators and benchmarks through intuitive, interactive and user-friendly mappings, plots and graphics, and open to the eInfrastructures stakeholders and to the public-at-large to generate personalized lists, rankings, and cross-comparisons, over time and across regions, in a fully modular and customizable way.The eNVENTORY project will extend prior benchmarking by including all core components of eInfrastructures (i.e., computing, communication and services) and will build the indicator databases from various international repositories. It will carry out extensive consultation with eInfrastructures stakeholders and research and innovation indicator experts, and will eventually deploy a prototype web platform dealing with a critically-selected subset of indicators and relevant repositories for further feedback on the intuitiveness, flexibility and ease of use.