New Dashboard Simplifies Evaluation of Lump Sum Proposals in Horizon Europe Grants

A new dashboard has been launched last week to assist experts in evaluating lump sum proposals for Horizon Europe grants. Focusing on personnel costs, the dashboard provides objective benchmarks for assessing the reasonability of budgets. By comparing proposed costs with signed grants, experts can ensure budgets are fair. The dashboard offers insights into personnel costs by country and organization type, highlighting regional and sectoral variations. Evaluators can use this information to determine if costs are reasonable. While higher costs above the 80th percentile are not uncommon, they should be justified in the proposal. The dashboard enhances transparency and efficiency in evaluating personnel costs for Horizon Europe grants.

The most important change is that older data have been excluded (dashboard now contains data from the actual cost grants under Horizon Europe (2021 – today) and Horizon 2020 (2018 – 2020)) and the source of data are grant agreements, which include budget estimates for the years after signature. The revised dashboard shows how many person months were funded at a given cost, not anymore the number of organisations and their average personnel costs. This means that the different weights of organisations with low and high levels of participation are accounted for. The instructions for experts and background information on the landing page of the dashboard were updated accordingly.