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2.2 Best practices in administration 

To deal with the aforementioned risks, the following best practices for project administration were identified:

  • Improve project communication between partners about administrative practices by creating communication channels for specific work packages and particular tasks, e.g., Google groups, shared Google calendar, and mailing lists for specific groups of people responsible for those tasks. When set up adequately, this supports efficient team communication and reduces the risk of information overload with irrelevant information. 
  • Improve project communication using digital tools like Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello, or AdminProject. There may be differences between partner institutes in terms of preferences or restrictions regarding the use of specific tools, in relation to issues such as privacy, security, or existing partnerships. A tool like Teams can be useful for internal communication within partner institutes, even if not all partners use it. A tool like Slack supports creating/participating in channels, direct messages, huddle calls, notifications and user status, 3rd party app integration (like Google Drive, calendars and Trello), as well as use on mobile devices. A tool like Trello supports Scrum agile development practices, with functionalities like creating task cards, adding checklists to tasks, adding team members, filtering the tasks on the board, as well as more advanced features such as automation of tasks on the board using specific rules and the use of  third-party add-ons to improve/expand the Trello board, like adding a calendar and integration with the tool Slack. A tool like AdminProject can support efficient communication including task assignment, automatic reminders, and shared file management, but such a tool will only be useful when embraced by all partners. Reducing the number of tools as much as possible helps to keep communication focused and reduce the risk of needless copying of information. 
  • Improve communication about administrative practices by connecting the coordinating partner from a widening country to other partner institutes and European administration support offices. This facilitates the flow of information between partners and support offices. As mentioned on the EU National Contact Point network website, “The network of National Contact Points (NCPs) is the main structure to provide guidance, practical information and assistance on all aspects of participation in Horizon Europe. NCPs are also established in many non-EU and non-associated countries (“third countries”).”  Some institutes also have their own local support agencies, e.g., the IXA Grant Support Team at AUAS offers support in several ways, including grant advice, business development (e.g., setting up collaborations with companies and non-profits), legal advice (Collaboration agreements, IP), financial instruments, and projects in valorisation stimulating programs. This IXA Grant support team consists of three advisors who provide support to researchers on National and EU funding, by giving information on grants, training workshops, interview training, advice and feedback on draft proposals and rebuttals. By sharing information from such support agencies, and directly involving their advisors in international project meetings, other partners become aware of such knowledge and possibilities. One can also find useful information in international project databases (CORDIS – HORIZON, ERASMUS Plus Projects results, and European Innovation Ecosystems Data Hub), and the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (EARMA) network, which includes working groups focusing on best practices, organizes a yearly conference, and offers training for research managers from starting to senior level, to support local agencies like IXA.
  • Improve skills in administration and management of research projects on emerging technologies in education by organizing training actions involving experts from administration support offices from leading partners. These can include hands-on workshops, webinars and presentations on state-of-the-art technologies and approaches for project management and administration. These help to reduce gaps between partners in terms of knowledge and skills in these areas.
  • To improve outreach and stakeholder engagement in education, make explicit what is necessary to manage the communication and ensure successful collaboration. This includes establishing and maintaining contacts, building trust by communicating clearly and managing expectations, and managing collaborative processes involved in requirements analysis, co-design of new learning tools and materials, evaluations of the outcomes in educational contexts, integration into educational practice, and dissemination.
  • To improve communication between academic and administrative staff, admin staff can benefit from training regarding research projects, in particular international projects. To reduce problems related to temporary employees leaving during or after projects, plan activities to transfer valuable expertise to other colleagues. Keep notes or records of important communication so that no important information is lost when one person changes position or leaves the organization.
  • To improve outreach to businesses and industry partners, good relationships with such partners are essential. Involving businesses directly as a partner in a project proposal may be an option for certain types of grants, and may even be mandatory in applied research projects. To build trust, it may help to participate in smaller projects first, such as student internship projects, where students of an educational institution do an internship at a company for their bachelor or master’s project, or a smaller project involving business applications. Contacts with businesses are often scattered through an organization, and it is important to share this information with colleagues. Software tools can strongly support managing external contacts, if these tools are consistently used to enter new contacts and update them regularly. For example, these can include mailing lists and databases with internship projects. Mailing lists with business contacts and their interests, can be used to inform business contacts about research and other events relevant to them. Databases with ads for student internship projects can help to combine practical business needs and research topics relevant for particular educational programmes. Networking tools such as LinkedIn and other social media may also be used to make new contacts through existing ones in your extended network, but also to share updates about each other’s work. 
  • To improve the management of interdisciplinary, administrators must have an open mind to differences between administrative frameworks of departments or institutes, and possess know-how of how to manage hybrid teams effectively. It helps to involve them directly in interdisciplinary project meetings, especially at the start of a project, to get a sense of what is involved and needed in such a project.
  • To address challenges related to fragmented or narrow expertise in widening countries, it is necessary to cultivate the formation and growth of interdisciplinary and cross-functional expertise. Even when an institute’s strategy is to specialize on particular themes, it is important to be flexible to recognize opportunities for applying the specialization to other domains, or connect it to other themes, especially those identified as focal themes of international funding schemes, such as those of the EU. People with experience with EU funding schemes and how these change over time should make an effort to share their experience and insights with younger colleagues new to the world of international research projects.
  • To increase resources for pursuing possibilities for funding, it is important to build experience, and share the benefits and experiences of past projects. When an organization does not have much experience yet, start with smaller projects, and build on those experiences to aim for larger grants. Try to get on board as a partner in other project consortia to gain experience, before initiating a project as a leading partner. Work on ideas for future projects before current projects are over. Investigate which institutes were successful in receiving grants of your interest, and why. Some types of grants (such as the EU Horizon-Widera programme) focus on widening countries and allocate resources especially for preparing project proposals.
  • To improve efficient project communication in a cross-disciplinary international project, several practices can help. Creating Communities of Interest around themes of interest helps to create groups, and stimulates learning from each other. Creating personal profiles with information about expertise, skills and interests helps to get to know each other and find specific people when needed. Setting up and adhering to a suitable logical folder structure and file name conventions help to keep files organized. Preparing templates for recurring types of files (e.g. prototype descriptions, or reviews) helps to efficiently create sets of structured documents that can be compared easily. Taking notes of meetings helps to document what has been discussed, what decisions have been taken, and what actions need to be done (by whom). It helps to keep the notes of all meetings of one CoI (or other kind of team) in one file, with the notes of the most recent meeting on top, to be able to search for information efficiently. AI transcription tools, such as otter.ai, fireflies.ai, or those built into Google Meet or Microsoft Teams (in paid plans), can be helpful in taking notes (and/or creating summaries) when no human notetaker is present or desired. The use of meeting and transcription software should be in concordance with national laws regarding data protection (e.g., GDPR), organizational policies, and requires consent of all participants. 
  • To present your institute as a suitable project partner, it is important to know your strengths and weaknesses, so you can actively search for partners that can appreciate your strengths and complement your weaknesses. Share information about your strengths, and your interests in possible future projects or project partners with your local and/or national support agency, so they can also search for you.   
  • To be able to benefit from National Contact Point (NCP) Support Services, contact them if you haven’t done so recently, let them know your needs, and let them inform you of what they can do for you. Speak to internal or external colleagues who have already had contact with them and share experiences.
  • To address the issue of limited access to tools and guidelines for effective administration, easily accessible, standardized resources, such as toolkits and best practice manuals should be developed and regularly updated, and shared proactively by and with project managers and administrators, and through them, to other colleagues in projects where relevant. As an example, see JKU’s guidelines on the Logical Framework Approach for funded projects. 
  • To increase capacity for leading large-scale international projects, it is necessary to build experience with smaller projects, and experience with participating as a non-leading partner first. Additional training should address the issues involved in coordinating a large-scale project. Such training, or information about it, can be provided by local international grant support offices at the organizational level, or national support agencies, such as the ones in the EU national contact point network.