EU’s Horizon 2020 may include a cost model change to cover 100% of all direct costs, but limit the overhead rate to a flat 20%

According to a poll at Framework Programme Sevent (FP7) group on LinkedIn, Horizon 2020 (http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020) may include a cost model change to cover 100% of all direct costs, but limit the overhead rate to a flat 20%.

 

From my perspective this is a change for the better:

• now some research organizations’ bureaucratic mechanisms sometimes act as leeches against the organization research teams that bring EU projects under the umbrella of a certain organization (like a university or research institute). So money goes to administration etc. and not to researches and developers

• Instead of supporting infrastructure acquisition/maintenance, EU should point the industry and research universities/institutes to cloud technologies market and cover such costs. That way they tap into cloud IT flexibility and lowered administration burdens, EU doesn’t pay for equipment that grows old quickly and also the cloud tech sector (SaaS [Software As A Service], PaaS [Platform As A Service], IaaS [Infrustructure As A Service] – referred all together as the SPI model in XaaS) get a boost.