I have done a bit of writing of project bids in the past but this was the first time that I got more heavily involved. As part of a really talented team (who I won’t mention at this point for privacy reasons) I helped to put together a bid to update and maintain the European Innovation Scoreboard.
This is a scoreboard and composite indicator owned by DG-RTD that measures innovation in European countries, and also looks at the sub-national level in the form of the Regional Innovation Scoreboard. The call for tender is a fairly big one and involves a few years of work. My role as usual would be to do the composite indicator calculations.
Of course we all have our fingers crossed that our bid might be successful. For my part, I have strongly advocated for reproducible development of composite indicators and good data science practice (e.g. programmatic approach, unit testing, use of collaborative platforms like GitHub and so on).
Other than that it was an interesting experience in compiling a big bid and working as a consortium. It was a lot of work, all the more so because it is prospective. But I think the result was pretty good. So I think we have a fighting chance to make it.