Regional Innovation Project Public Sector 2022

• The Project Owner must be one of the city of Oslo’s own municipal undertakings or agencies, or a state owned undertaking with business address in Oslo
• The Project Owner must secure full funding of the project in addition to the amount awarded by RRF Oslo.
• The Project Owner must have approved the submission of the grant application to RRF Oslo
• The maximum degree of funding is 70 % of approved project costs for applicants from the municipality of Oslo and 50% for applicants from state-owned undertakings

Requirements for the Project Owner

The Project Owner must be a Norwegian public body according to the definition of public body and have a registered business address in the Oslo Municipality.

Requirements for collaboration with a research organisation

One or more approved research organisations can participate in the project in effective collaboration. See list of approved research organisations.

R&D work on assignment and providing research services are not considered effective collaboration.

Requirements for collaboration with other kinds of partners

In order to secure dissemination of results, we encourage including more actors as collaboration partners in the project.

These can be other public bodies, industry, interest groups and other actors relevant to the project.

A collaboraton shall be effective collaboration as defined in the state aid rules.

For projects with more than one partner the following applies:

• The research shall be executed in effective collaboration between all partners as defined in the state aid rules: collaboration between at least two independent parties to exchange knowledge or technology, or to achieve a common objective based on the division of labour where the parties jointly define the scope of the collaborative project, contribute to its implementation and share its risks, as well as its results. One or several parties may bear the full costs of the project and thus relieve other parties of its financial risks. Contract research and provision of research services are not considered forms of collaboration.
• One and the same actor may not undertake several roles in the project, for example as project owner and collaboration partner or subcontractor in the same project.

Requirements for principal investigator

The professional qualifications and suitability of the principal investigator will be peer reviewed.  

The principal investigator must be employed by the project owner, an R&D partner or a collaboration partner.  

We encourage user participation

In many instances user participation and user knowledge are important in order to succeed in innovation work.

By users we mean those who will receive a service, professional users/user organisations and/or those who will provide a service (employees). When relevant, you should accommodate user participation, and the user perspective should be clear in the project.

Foreign partners

We can not grant support for foreign partners in this call. Foreign partners who participate in a project therefore either must cover their own costs or be engaged as a subcontractor in the project.

Sole propritetorships can be collaboration partners

Sole propritetorships can be collaboration partners, but the holder of the sole proprietorship can not have their own personal- and indirect costs funded.

Sole proprietorships can receive funding for personell- and indirect costs for employees, and other costs they may carry for participating in a project, provided these are entered into the sole propietorship’s accounts.

The relevant partners and R&D providers at the time the application is submitted forms the basis for our assessment of the application, and their participation in the project is a stringent condition for funding. If you change the composition of the project before we enter into a contract with you, we may therefore withdraw our funding pledge. 

We can fund part of the applicants’ costs pertaining to R&D activities. R&D activities must be industrial research or experimental development as set out in the state aid rules.

You can apply for funding of actual costs necessary to carry out the project.

In your project description you must give a plan for how the innovation will be implemented and lead to value creation, both during and after the project has ended. Please note that we do not finance costs for realising gains.

All project costs must be budgeted according to the guidelines from the Research Council of Norway. You will find detailed and important information on what to enter in the project budget on the webpages of the Research council of Norway.

In instances where the public body carries out economic activity consisting of offering goods or services on a given market, the level of funding is regulated by the state aid rules.

The project budget may contain the following types of costs:

• Payroll and indirect expenses, whic are costs carried by the project owner and collaboration partners in the public sector, R&D organisations and Norwegian industry.
• Other operating expenses, which are costs for other activities necessary to carry out the R&D activities of the project. Any procurement from sub-contractors belongs in this category. All costs budgeted under “other operating expenses” must be specified in your application.
• Equipment,  the costs of renting (costs for use and operation) and depreciation of the institution’s own investments and equipment/research infrastructure necessary for the execution of the project

The budget line for «R&D procurement” shall not be used.

Scope of funding

We can grant funding between 1 million NOKS to 2 million NOKS pr project in this call.

When the project owner is a public body belonging to the City of Oslo, the maximum degree of support from RRF Oslo to the project is upwardly limited to 70% of the total approved project costs.

When the project owner is a public body belonging to the state, the maximum degree of support from RRF Oslo to the project is upwardly limited to 50% of the total approved project costs.

Conditions for funding

• The latest permitted start-up date for the project will be six months after the awarded grant was announced. Projects approved for funding that have not started within this date may lose their grant.
• RRF Oslo will be required to submit progress-, and accounting reports during the project, in addition to a final report and audited final accounts for the project.

State aid

Funding awarded to an ‘undertaking’ constitutes state aid. In this context, an ‘undertaking’ is defined as any actor that carries out an economic activity consisting of offering products or services in a given market. This will apply to any business partners in the project, but can also apply to municipal or state-owned undertakings. Companies serving as partners may have parts of their project costs covered in accordance with the General Block Exemption Regulation Article 25 (Commission Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014). Read more about conditions for awarding state aid. 

Funding for R&D organisations will be considered funding for non-economic activity, because the R&D project will be carried out in effective collaboration. As such, funding does not constitute state-aid. RRF Oslo  assumes that the R&D partner has established a consistent and transparent separation between their non-economic activities and their economic activities.

For entities that constitute an undertaking as defines by state-aid rules, the degree of support will depend on the size of the undertaking and the type of R&D activitites in the project. The degree of support can vary from 25-70 % (municipal bodies) /50 % (state bodies) as set out in state aid rules (see “article 25 Aid for research and development projects” in the link. )

RRF Oslo expects research data to be made available in accordance with the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable). For projects that handle data the organisation of the project owner shall prepare a plan for handling data when revising the application.  

The Project Owner is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. The Project Owner must specify the planned solution(s) in connection with the revised grant proposal. 

Regarding studies medicine and health which involve humans 

For studies in medicine and health invovling humnans, there are 

For medisinske og helsefaglige studier som involverer mennesker, er det specific Requirements and guidelines for registration and disclosure of medical and health-related studies involving human participants.

We will disburse 50 % of the funding on the basis of an invoice at project start-up and then further up to 50 % on approval of project accounts for the first project year. Funding for the second project year is disbursed in the same way. It is possible to agree on a different plan for disbursement. 

The final disbursement is conditional on approval of the project’s final report and project accounts.  

Only actual expenses entered in the Project Owner’s accounts will be covered.  

Requirements for this application type

Applications must be created and submitted via My RCN Web. You may submit and resubmit your application multiple times up to the submission deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have filled in the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline is past, it is the last submitted version of the application that will be evaluated. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in Norwegian or English.  
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format. 

Mandatory attatcments

• A project description of up to 10 pages. Use the standard template which you can download from the bottom of this webpage.  
• Partner information for the company (project owner) submitting the grant application and each of the partner companies (business partners). Use the standard template which you can download from the bottom of this webpage.  
• CVs for the principal investigator and other key project participants, a maximum of 6 CVs (including principal investigator). Use the standard template which you can download from the bottom of this webpage.  

Please note that all templates are new in 2022, and you shall only use the templates published with this call.  

Optional attachments 

• Proposal for up to three referees who are considered qualified to assess the application. 

All requirements set out in the call must be met. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements, or requirements relating to the Project Owner, collaboration and roles in the project, will not be processed. 

We will not assess documents and websites linked to in the application, or other attachments than those specified above. There is no technical validation of the content of uploaded attachments, so please ensure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment. 

1) Excellence

2) Impact

3) Implementation

4) Relevance for the call

Applications that satisfy the formal requirements will be asessed by external referees. External referees  will assess the criteria ‘Excellence’, ‘Impact’ and ‘Implementation’.  

Each application will normally be assessed by a referee panel comprising three referees. The referee panel will submit a consensus-based assessment for each of the three criteria. 

If the mark awarded by the referee panel for all of the criteria is 4 or higher on a scale where 7 is the highest mark, the application will be assessed by RFF Oslo’s case officers also on the basis of the criterion regional ‘Relevance to the call for proposals’. The assessment and marks for all four criteria will be consolidated into a single, overall mark that indicates the merit of the application. 

Based on the referee panel’s assessment and the regional ‘relevance to the call for proposals’ criteria, RFF Oslo’s administration will then present a recommendation to RFF Oslo’s fund board for the final funding decision. The board will emphasise achieving a balanced portfolio of projects and the priorities in the call.  

Expected funding decision 

RFF Oslo’s board will make a decision on the funding of applications from tis call in week no 50, 2022. 

RRF Oslo publishes the results of calls on this webpage.