On April 17th, the coordination team of Traceability & Big Data, along with the Secretariat of the S3 Community of Practice (CoP in advance), held a kick-off meeting following the official launch of the S3 CoP.

The purpose of this meeting was to introduce themselves to each other and discuss the next steps for Thematic Partnerships.

Els van de Velde, in charge of monitoring the Thematic Partnerships, outlined the main services that the CoP will offer and explained the upcoming milestones. Among others, it was mentioned that a new website is being prepared that will contain all the information about Thematic Partnerships, transferring the information from the current website hosted at JRC and updating it.

From T&BD, Mar Cátedra (Andalusia) presented the Partnership and its current state of affairs, including the redefinition of the action plan in which they are currently immersed. Together with Sofia Miceli (Emilia Romagna) and the rest of the technical team, the needs of T&BD and other Partnerships were discussed.

As the next steps, within the eight services offered by the CoP, each Thematic Partnership will choose three in order of priority, and the CoP, in collaboration with DG REGIO, will approve one for the current exercise, with implementation starting after the summer. These services will provide expert advice in different areas depending on the level of implementation of the Partnership and its current needs. These services may be renewed and/or modified on an annual basis, with new services being incorporated or existing ones being modified based on feedback provided by the Partnerships.

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