Governance Principles

The governance choices that SPARTA is experimenting have strived to draw from the state-of-the-art in research and innovation organization, mission-oriented policies, and public procurement management. Governance in SPARTA is described over multiple levels of decision-making, ranging from top-level strategic directions to operational management of tasks.

More than anything, SPARTA advocates for the implementation of self-aware capacities, with honest feedback loops and dynamic features, as a sound and sustainable basis for European excellence in innovation.

The SPARTA governance model is rooted in concrete, applicable first principles. These principles structure the SPARTA network, guide conversations, and help navigate complex decisions.

Principle 1: Change the philosophy of risk

The network’s Roadmap and Programs will aim at identifying ambitious goals, and implement research towards these goals that produce concrete and actionable results. In doing so, SPARTA is able to investigate new ideas while accurately measuring progress, promoting a “fail early, fail often” philosophy. SPARTA aims to recognize the value of negative results that successfully highlight scientific dead-ends and unfeasible technical paths.

Principle 2:Diversity as an asset for innovation

“United in diversity” is the motto of the European Union, approved in 2000, and signifies how Europeans have come together, in the form of the EU, to work for peace and prosperity, while at the same time being enriched by the continent’s many different cultures, traditions and languages. In a globalized digital world, SPARTA leverages geographic and disciplinary diversity to build knowledge on which to push for a more inclusive, secure and resilient European society.

Principle 3:Create opportunities for open leadership

In a fast-moving field such as cybersecurity, numerous strategic or tactical decisions need to be made efficiently. SPARTA uses these, at all levels of the network, as gender-diverse opportunities for scientists to lead the way for their communities. Such leadership requires a combination of scientific excellence, goal-driven philosophy, open-minded communication, and ethics. It ensures detailed and expert risk monitoring, and as a direct consequence, open additional degrees of freedom in the implementation of research actions.

Principle 4:Recognize horizontal leverage points

SPARTA recognizes the grounding importance of vertical requirement collection, and organization. These foundations are combined with a special attention to cross-domain leverage: reuse is a significant drive in the history of innovation, and it is even more effective in Computer Science where digital artefacts are easier to disseminate and adapt. SPARTA encourages horizontal developments to ensure the efficiency of its investments, maximize their impacts, and optimize their sustainability.

Principle 5:Build digital platforms for forward-looking stakeholder

The turn of the 20th century factory profoundly changed the way we produce technology. Forward-looking companies are anticipating an equivalent shift with digital platforms today. SPARTA develops and connects digital and physical platforms, as well as streamlines their related operational models. These serve as technological bases for innovation, as training facilities for cyber skills development, and more generally as catalysts and force multipliers in the development of cybersecurity capacities and digital autonomy.

By consistently and fairly applying these principles, the SPARTA project will foster the emergence of a thriving research and innovation model, allowing the development of unique innovation strategies, serving operational teams, industrial competitiveness, and supporting European strategic autonomy.