• Having a broad and growing spectrum of types of compute resources behind a single interface (EGI-ACE Open Call) and single allocation process
• Streamlined support and communication through the use case shepherds and with access to experts for consultancy to select the most suitable types and combination of compute and related platform/data services to realise a use case
• Build partnership with national providers for long-term usage of their compute resources
• Free-at-point-of-use access to national and relevant international capacity

• A scalable resource allocation approach that considers local and European policies and the needs of national and international research communities
• Simplified integration to EOSC (because of aggregating multiple providers behind a single service, because of the compute-oriented support given by the project)
• Simplified order handling and customer relationship management (because of the first line CRM team that pre-analyses and brokers orders to best fitting providers, because of the shepherd who liaises with the use cases)
• Being part of a compute community that advises each other on topics of shared interest (e.g. containers, green computing)
• Working with like-minded compute centres on harmonised policies, protocols, approaches for service operation, architecture and funding
• Co-funding by the EC to deliver relevant services across national borders

The proposed structure of EGI-ACE governance and management represents three main challenges:

• understanding the EOSC landscape (Project Management Board, Strategy foresight expert group),
• provisioning of services to meet customer needs (Service Delivery and Support board), and
• emphasising the importance of innovation management in project management (the Innovation manager is a member in all management boards/groups).

The management structure for EGI-ACE will be supported by the relevant EGI boards that will have an advisory role to the where appropriate. Being the EGI Foundation the organization entrusted by the Council to run coordination functions for the EGI Federation, project support and management activities are run by the EGI Foundation. Consortium beneficiaries are involved through the project governance and management structures to set the strategy for the project and oversee its implementation.

The General Assembly (GA) is the ultimate decision-making body of the project with responsibility for the overall execution of the action. The GA provides direction to the Project Management Board and the Project Management Office. The GA formulates proposals and takes decisions in accordance with procedures set out in the consortium agreement

• Interfaces: Provides direction to the Project Management Board, the Project Management Office and the Project Coordinator
• Chair: Elected by GA members
• Members: Each beneficiary is represented by one voting member, Project Coordinator, Technical Coordinator and Project Manager (ex-officio non-voting members)
• Decision-making process: voting
• Meeting frequency: 1 to 2 times per year.

Accountable to the General Assembly (GA), the Project Management Board (PMB) is responsible for the proper execution and implementation of the decisions of the GA. It is the executive and supervisory body of the project implementation and drives the project strategy. It shall make decisions and collaborate, where necessary on the content and timing of press releases and joint publications by the Consortium or proposed by the Funding Authority in respect of the procedures of the Grant Agreement. The PMB is the penultimate body involved in conflict resolution upon request of the Project coordinator.

• Interfaces: accountable to the GA
• Chair: Project Manager (non-voting); Members: from 7 to maximum 11 installation provider representatives elected by the GA, including minimum 3 thematic community representatives; Project Coordinator, Technical Coordinator, Quality Manager (ex-officio, non-voting)
• Decision-making process: voting
• Meeting frequency: Quarterly

Accountable to the General Assambly (GA), the Project Management Office (PMO) will serve the implementation of the project in compliance with the H2020 rules. It will execute the daily financial activities, administration and related communications with the European Commission Project Officer. PMO will define the project management guidelines and monitor the budget allocation and consumption. It will also be in charge of the innovation management activity of the project. The PMO is involved in the first steps of the conflict resolution process. It will provide guidance and support all actors during the process.

• Interfaces: GA (accountable to); PMB and SDS (reports to); Provides administrative support to the project boards, gather status of deliverables and milestones, risks and metrics from  all WP leaders
• Chair: Quality manager
• Members: Quality Manager, Project management officer, Innovation Manager, Project Manager, Project coordinator, Technical Coordinator
• Meeting frequency: Monthly

Accountable to the Project Management Board (PMB). In collaboration with the QM it shall monitor the effective and efficient implementation of the Project, with a particular focus on delivery, access provisioning, promotion and exploitation of services. It reviews the Project deliverables and milestones. It shall support and collaborate with the Project Coordinator, Technical Coordinator and Project Manager in preparing reports, deliverables and project reviews. It regularly coordinates with service providers organized in a forum, where potential issues in service delivery, technical integration and support are identified together with opportunities for service provisioning. It supervises the usage of the services and reports to the PMB concerning service strategy. SDS can be involved in the conflict
resolution process upon request of the project manager as required.

• Interfaces: Accountable to PMB
• Chair: co-chaired by Innovation Manager (non-voting) and Technical Coordinator (non-voting)
• Members: WP leaders; installation representatives (same as PMB); Project Manager, Community Manager, Communication Manager (ex officio)
• Decision-making process: by consensus
• Meeting frequency: Monthly

The Strategy Foresight Expert Group (SFG) shall support the project to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organisational ways. It will help to detect adverse conditions, guide policy, shape strategy, and explore the EOSC market. It will support strategic management of the project with futures methods. It will liaise with EC and other projects on strategy level. It advocates for the project and brings EGI-ACE strategy input to EOSC legal entities and INFRAEOSC-03-2020 projects.

• Interfaces: Gives advice to the PMB and the Project coordinator
• Chair: Strategy Manager; Members: Project Coordinator, Technical Coordinator, Innovation Manager, Project Manager (ex-officio); and strategic advisors
• Meeting frequency: Quarterly

• IDIA
• RENAM
• GRENA
• IMCS UL
• T-Systems
• CloudFerro
• EdelweissConnect
• OPERAS AISBL
• Open Science Grid
• CNIC
• Academia Sinica
• University of Birmingham

• Masaryk University
• CESGA
• UPV
• SCAI
• GSI
• ALU-FR
• CNR
• ISA
• Utrecht University
• JISC
• UKAEA

WP1 deals with overall project administration, with finances and with project management, including the definition and coordination of the quality and risk management. It monitors resource and financial expenditures, contractual obligations, and takes care of reporting and high level supervision of the other work packages, coordinates the internal review of deliverables and plans and monitors risk analysis, contingency plans, procedures, KPIs and metrics. It manages project innovation with the support of the communication, and dissemination function.

WP1 Tasks

• T1.1 Administration and finance management EGI.eu (lead)
• T1.2 Technical Coordination, activities, and governance management EGI.eu (lead)
• T1.3 Quality and risk management EGI.eu (lead)
• T1.4 Innovation Management EGI.eu (lead)

WP1 Deliverables

• D1.1, D1.3, D1.6 Quality, Risk and Innovation Management Plan EGI.eu
• D1.2, D1.5 Data Management Plan EGI.eu
• D1.4, D1.7 Dissemination and Exploitation Plan EGI.eu

WP2 ensures the strategic alignment of the project with EOSC Governance, policymakers, relevant projects and emerging national EOSC nodes. It ensures the alignment of the EGI-ACE service offering with the EOSC portal, covering policy, technical and service portfolio aspects. It  provides training and consultancy activities for users and providers of the EOSC Compute Platform, as well as delivers communication, dissemination and event organisation activities.

WP2 Tasks

• T2.1 Strategy and coordination with EOSC Projects and Legal Entity EGI.eu (lead)
• T2.2 EOSC Portal alignment and coordination EGI.eu (lead)
• T2.3 Service promotion, user community support and coordination EGI.eu (lead), ACK Cyfronet, BTIP NAS, CESGA, CNS, CNRS,
  CSIC, EISCAT, GRNET, IASA, IDIA, IJS, INFN , Sciensano,
  SRCE, SZTAKI, TUW, UKIM, UKRI, UPV
• T2.4 Communication and dissemination EGI.eu (lead)

WP2 Deliverables

• D2.1, D2.6 Communication and engagement EGI.eu
• D2.2 EGI-ACE Strategic Plan EGI.eu
• D2.3, D2.7 Technical specifications for compute common services EGI.eu
• D2.4, D2.8 Technical, Policy and Service Management Integration Report EGI.eu
• D2.5, D2.9 EOSC Compute Platform Handbook EGI.eu
• D2.10 EGI-ACE Final Recommendations EGI.eu

WP3 provides infrastructure-level services and specialised support to access  baseline computing and storage resources to meet the internal needs of WP4 and WP5, and the demand arising from the EOSC Portal. Services include the EGI Cloud Compute (IaaS) and EGI High-Throughput Compute supported by 16 data centres of the EGI Federation. They also include enabling service components needed for an optimal use of the distributed infrastructure.

WP3 Tasks 

• T3.1 IaaS Federation Services IASA, IISAS, UPV
• T3.2 IaaS Services CESGA, CSIC, CYFRONET,
  IICT-BAS, IFIN-HH, LIP

WP3 Deliverables

• D3.1, D3.2, D3.3, D3.4, D3.5 Periodical assessment of Infrastructure services EGI.eu

WP4 provides platform-level services and specialised support for the use of compute services. The WP offers mature, generic software tools ‘as services’ with to facilitate the usage of the underlying infrastructure (cloud, HTC, HPC) by EOSC users and Data Spaces. The services include the EGI Notebooks, EGI Workload Manager, the DEEP Training Facility and DODAS.

WP4 Tasks 

• T4.1 EGI Notebooks: Create interactive documents with live code, visualisations, and text CESNET
• T4.2 EGI Workload Manager: Manage computing workloads in an efficient way CNRS
• T4.3 DEEP training facility: Distributed training facility for ML, AI, and Deep Learning models. CSIC, LIP
• T4.4 DODAS: centralized and automated deployment of distributed and federated clusters. INFN

WP4 Deliverables 

• D4.1, D4.2, D4.3, D4.4, D4.5 Periodical assessment of Platform services EGI.eu

WP5 provides Data Space services and specialised support in the area of health & medicine, climate research, energy and physical sciences, environmental sciences and social sciences & humanities. The Data Spaces are provided by major European research collaborations, research infrastructures and research institutes, and are composed of the infrastructure and platform services, as well as scientific applications, tools and datasets that offer science discipline specific processing and data analysis capabilities in an integrated way for EOSC users.

WP5 Tasks

• T5.1 Health and medicine CIRMMP, CNRS CREATIS, EdelweissConnect, Univ of Freiburg, UoB, UU
• T5.2 Climate research CMCC, IPSL, LNEC
• T5.3 Energy and physical sciences NWO-I ASTRON, SURFSARA, UKAEA
• T5.4 Environmental sciences AS ASGC, CSIC, EMSO, ISA, LIP, MARIS
• T5.4 Social sciences and humanities OPERAS AISBL

WP5 Deliverables 

• D5.1, D5.2, D5.3, D5.4, D5.5 Periodical assessment of Data Space services EGI.eu

WP6 provides access services and specialised support to interact with the federated resources of the  EOSC Compute Platform. They enable  secure authentication-authorisation, access to distributed datasets from the compute resources, and management of  large data analysis workloads in scalable virtual clusters. The services are delivered by major European research institutions based on mature open source software with already established user communities from multiple scientific disciplines.

WP6 Tasks

• T6.1 Federated AAI CESNET, GRNET, NWO-I NIKHEF
• T6.2 Federated Data Access EnhanceR, UKRI, ACK Cyfronet
• T6.3 Federated Compute Access INFN, UPV

WP6 Deliverables

• D6.1, D6.2, D6.3, D6.4, D6.5 Periodical assessment of Federated access services EGI.eu

WP7 ensures that EGI-ACE services are provided in conformance with their Service Level Agreements. All activities relating to service delivery and service planning are covered, from the operations coordination to the maintenance of the Service Management System. The WP also includes Information Security activities, delivering an effective and functioning security infrastructure, maintaining trust in the EOSC Compute Platform via the EGI Federation.

WP7 Deliverables

• D7.1 Service Management Tools Technical Plan EGI.eu
• D7.2, D7.5 Status of the SMS Processes EGI.eu
• D7.3 Final version of HPC integration handbook EGI.eu
• D7.4 Green Computing progress and improvements within EGI-ACE CSIC

WP7 Tasks

• T7.1 Service Delivery EGI.eu
• T7.2 Service Planning and Green Computing EGI.eu (lead), CNRS, CSIC, JISC
• T7.3 HPC integration EGI.eu (lead), CERN, CMCC, CESGA , IFIN-HH, IICT-BAS, INFN, LIP, TUBITAK, UKAEA
• T7.4 International cloud integration EGI.eu (lead), CLOUDFERRO, CNIC, GRENA, IDIA, IMCS UL, OSG, RENAM, SZTAKI, T-SYSTEMS
• T7.5 Security Coordination UKRI (lead), CERN, CESNET, GRNET, IJS, NOW-I NIKHEF
• T7.6 Service Management Tools EGI.eu (lead), CESNET, CNRS CC-IN2P3, CESGA, CSIC, GRNET, INFN, LIP, SRCE, UKRI, IMCS UL, OSG, RENAM, SZTAKI, T-SYSTEMS
• T7.5 Security Coordination UKRI (lead), CERN, CESNET, GRNET, IJS, NOW-I NIKHEF
• T7.6 Service Management Tools EGI.eu (lead), CESNET, CNRS CC-IN2P3, CESGA, CSIC, GRNET, INFN, LIP, SRCE, UKRI