The Government of Spain has added to the website office of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan a new page for the title 'Meet the Strategic Initiative for Public Procurement of Innovation (IECPI) of INCIBE', one of the success stories of Novadays working with our customers so that they can achieve their goals and enable their public policies. Below is the text that introduces the Initiative.

Source: https://planderecuperacion.gob.es/noticias/conoce-iniciativa-estrategica-compra-publica-innovacion-IECPI-incibe-prtr

Learn about INCIBE's Strategic Initiative for Public Procurement of Innovation (IECPI)

INCIBE's Strategic Initiative for Public Procurement of Innovation (IECPI) aims to develop high-value innovation solutions and services in cybersecurity, strengthen Capabilities and promote talent.

This industrial development model has established itself as a very useful instrument for promoting innovation and competitiveness from the public administration, generating solutions to previously detected problems and needs that do not currently exist in the market. Thus, it uses public demand for products, services and supplies as an instrument through which to channel public policies and facilitate them to purchasing entities.

INCIBE's IECPI is endowed with a global budget of 224 million euros and is framed within Component 15, Investment 7: "Cybersecurity: Strengthening the Capabilities of citizens, SMEs and professionals; and Boosting the sector's ecosystem" of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR).

What are its objectives?

The National Institute of Cybersecurity (INCIBE), an entity under the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Function, decided in 2021 to explore the possibilities that strategic public procurement could have for developing national policies on cybersecurity, while the entity managed to execute its mandate related to innovation and industry.

The IECPI is the result of reflection and consensus with other public actors in the cybersecurity ecosystem and aims to carry out a set of actions aimed at promoting R&D&I and the creation of products and solutions in the field of cybersecurity.

This objective is broken down into 4 specific objectives, which are as follows:

• Promote R&D&I in cybersecurity.
• Promote cybersecurity entrepreneurship.
• Strengthen cybersecurity Capabilities .
• Develop cybersecurity talent.

This initiative is, in turn, the appropriate instrument to address major societal challenges related to cybersecurity:

• Strengthening digital confidence. The action measures will be aimed at establishing a climate of confidence in the digital environment, a necessary condition for the effective implementation of ICTs in the business sector and in public administrations, and a more intensive use of ICTs by citizens.
• Reducing the digital divide. The aim is to strengthen Spain's cybersecurity capacity in order to reduce the existing digital divide in all sectors of society: the productive sector, public administrations and citizens.
• Reducing the gender digital divide. Specifically, the actions seek to reduce the gender digital divide through specific measures aimed at promoting awareness, learning and the attraction and development of female talent.
• Improving public services. All this with the general challenge, inherent in the use of public procurement of innovation, to innovate in Public Administrations, improving public services, with increases in their efficiency, effectiveness, security or quality; through investment in new or improved equipment, infrastructure, products, solutions and services; affecting both INCIBE's own purchases and those of any other national, regional or local public body interested in participating as a user in the initiative.

What actions does the IECPI propose?

In order to achieve the planned objectives and respond to the challenges identified, INCIBE has identified a series of actions that can be executed through the Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI).

• R&D programs with companies in the cybersecurity industry: aims to carry out joint R&D programs between INCIBE and industrial driving companies, capable of creating sets of products, solutions and technologies with a high strategic impact on the company's position in the market, as well as capable of responding to challenges in the public sector, SMEs or strategic NIS2 sectors in the long term.
• Technological solutions for cybersecurity in SMEs: its objective is to create solutions that allow the cybersecurity needs of large groups of SMEs to be met remotely.
• Cybersecurity technology solutions for strategic sectors: aims to create solutions to meet the cybersecurity needs of public and private companies in the strategic sectors identified by the NIS2 Directive.
• Technological solutions to public sector challenges: the objective is to create solutions to meet the needs of the public sector and improve the services it offers. Each of the projects presented must be oriented to the development and technological progress up to the creation of the solutions and their demonstration and operation in the real environment for a sufficient period of time to validate the quality of the products and solutions created.
• Technological solutions for the improvement of INCIBE's own infrastructures and equipment: its objective is to create solutions that enable innovation and improvement of INCIBE's infrastructures, services and equipment in everything related to the improvement in terms of prevention, prediction and detection of cyberthreats and cyberattacks.
• Highly innovative small projects in cybersecurity carried out by SMEs or entrepreneurs: aims at the creation of highly innovative technological solutions developed by SMEs and entrepreneurs to increase and boost cybersecurity Capabilities in any of the fields of action (public sector, SMEs or strategic sectors), as well as the creation of basic technologies that can be used for the subsequent creation of solutions.

What resources do you have?

INCIBE's IECPI is endowed with an overall budget of 224 million euros, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR) with funding from the Next Generation EU.

• The 1st call for proposals 26,451,789.36 was awarded to 8 contractors and 13 projects to be executed from July 2023 to June 2026.
• The 2nd call for proposals 74,462,187.97 to 53 contractors and 86 projects to be executed from June 2023 to June 2026.
• The 3rd call for proposals 49,609,753.52 to 38 contractors and 46 projects to be executed from September 2023 to June 2026.
• The 4th call for proposals 43,518,308.66 to 11 contractors and 11 projects to be executed before February 28, 2026.

Detailed information on the projects can be accessed on the Public Procurement of Innovation map.