Open Future is a partner in the NGI Commons project that kicked off at the beginning of this year. The project is funded by the European Commission and aims to define a strategic agenda to support Digital Commons and Public Digital Infrastructure. NGI Commons is run in collaboration with Martel Innovate, who coordinates the project, OpenForum Europe, the Linux Foundation, and the Centre Internet et Société (CIS) of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
NGI Commons is part of the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. Its objective is to reimagine the internet as an interoperable platform ecosystem that embodies the values of openness, inclusivity, transparency, privacy, and cooperation. The end goal is to create a range of open-source and decentralized solutions that users can choose from. NGI has already funded 1000 of those.
During the next 36 months, the NGI Commons consortium will work on a long-term strategy for Digital Commons — resources critical for Europe’s sovereignty and trust. Our objective will be to close the gap between a number of grassroots-commoners’ initiatives and existing top-down sovereignty policies. We hope this strategy will inform the creation of a more coherent European funding landscape across both public and private sectors.
Open Future’s role in the project is to develop a strategic agenda for Digital Commons policies, especially in the context of the next multiannual financial framework (MFF) — the EU’s long-term budget. We will work with policy makers, community leaders, academics, and digital commons practitioners to map existing initiatives, assess their impact, and provide evidence-based policy recommendations to the EU. This builds on Open Future’s vision and previous work on Public Digital Infrastructure and the European Public Digital Infrastructure Fund.
To follow the project’s updates at the source, you can check out its official website and subscribe to the following channels:
- Mastodon | https://eupolicy.social/@NGICommons
- LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/ngi-commons
