EOSC-CONNECT has been launched, the European project funded by Horizon Europe that aims to strengthen the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Federation by connecting 14 national nodes to the European infrastructure.
Coordinated by CSC – IT Center for Science (Finland), the project involves 22 partners from 14 countries and has an overall budget of almost €8 million. Activities will run from September 2026 to August 2029.
For Italy, GARR, ICSC and INFN are taking part, contributing to the construction of the EOSC national nodes and to the development of key federative capabilities.
In particular, GARR is leading activities on the Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI), a fundamental element in ensuring secure, federated and interoperable access to EOSC resources and services. Planned activities also include trials of OpenID Federation and of new digital identity technologies.
Through EOSC-CONNECT, GARR is thus contributing to the development of an increasingly interoperable, open European research ecosystem geared towards the sharing of data and resources.
The initiative's launch event will take place over the days from 29 September to 1 October in Helsinki, during which all partners will come together and activities will be officially kicked off.