The European Defence Agency has recently approved the Final Ethics Check of the OCEAN 2020 Project, allowing the Consortium to successfully complete the Ethical, Legal, Societal and Data Protection (“ELSOP”) compliance journey started at the beginning of the project. The main objective of this document is to provide a representation of the level of maturity and compliance of the selected project partners to the ELSOP features as well as to identify areas for improvement.

Coordinated by Leonardo, the ELSOP activity spread out during two years and a half, involving primarily the appointed Data Protection and Ethics Team that included  personnel from 16 National Coordinators selected among the project partners.

ELSOP requirements represent a real novelty and therefore there has been a strong interest in  all participants to study them and engage in this challenging activity

The Data Protection & Ethics Team was very proactive to solve the many issues arisen along the path, as well as to build sensitivity and capability at national level. This approach allowed all Project members to learn more about the new language of  ELSOP compliance, considered as the new complementary frontier in the EU funded Research Programmes in technology and innovation for companies and institutions.

In light  of other future programmes, all the efforts made on the ELSOP activities turned out to be pioneer, consistent and circular with the approach of each National Coordinator.