SIC-SPAIN 2.0
Funding and work programme and call for applications
The SIC-SPAIN Project 2.0 “Safer Internet Centre Spain 2.0” is a project co-funded by the European Union (EU) through the programme CEF-Telecom, call Safer Internet (CEF-TC-2020-1).
This call is a continuation of the calls Safer Internet (2015-CEF-TC-2015-1) y Safer Internet (CEF-TC-2018-1)which had similar objectives, promoting, firstly, the creation of the SIC (Safer Internet Centre / Centro de Internet Segura) in Spain, called Internet Segura For Kids(IS4K) and, secondly, the creation of a platform for public-private collaboration to promote safer use of the Internet.
Duration
The project is expected to run from January 2021 to February 2022.
Purpose and justification
The call 2020 CEF Telecom Call - Safer Internet (CEF-TC-2020-1) aims to support services helping make the Internet a trusted place, especially for children, by providing an infrastructure for sharing resources, services and practices among national SICs in Europe and to provide their services to their users, including industry.
Based on its interoperability with the European Basic Services Platform, the funding, according to this call, will allow the various European SICs to maintain and expand national platforms throughout the EU with the following services:
- Raising awareness: An awareness centre for educating children, parents, teachers and other professionals working with children about the child protection risks they may encounter in online activities. Specific awareness tools and services will be developed in cooperation with third parties.
- Helpline: Online help services providing support to young people, parents, educators and other professionals in online child protection matters.
- Hotline: A comprehensive reporting service for citizens that receives and manages incidents related to illegal child sexual abuse images and videos online.
Benefits
The main benefits of this project are:
- Expanding and improving dissemination nationally, working with children, young people, parents, educators and associated professionals to ensure they know the threats to minors and adolescents in the use of the Internet and technologies.
- Creating a public-private platform for national collaboration to cooperate in a coordinated manner in dissemination.
- Strengthening the presence of the Spanish SIC on the networks INSAFE and INHOPE.
- Increasing cooperation with LEAs in reporting indicators, presence on INHOPE and hotline.
Project goals
The SIC-SPAIN Project 2.0 led by INCIBE focuses on three main goals:
Continuity and reinforcement
- Continuity and reinforcement of the current work of the Spanish SIC, IS4K in the identified work lines:
- Awareness-raising and training area: INCIBE and all the consortium partners will continue developing and improving the awareness-raising campaigns and educational initiatives, national programmes, and organisation of events, seeking collaboration with relevant partners to broaden the impact of their actions.
- Helpline 017: INCIBE will continue to operate the service, developing the services it offers through continuous training of its operators, improving procedures, coordinating referrals to and from external agents and the knowledge base, as well as providing new channels of communication, such as instant messaging.
- Hotline: INCIBE will continue to coordinate nationally with the LEAs and the Public Prosecutor’s Office to drive the operation of the service to reduce the availability of online child abuse content in Spain, and to contribute to the international network of hotlines INHOPE.
- Youth panel: the youth initiative launched in 2019 will enjoy the collaboration of various partners to provide continuity and keep driving actions designed by and for young people, such as debating groups and representation of young people, peer-mentoring programmes, as well as raising awareness among and training educators and professionals working with these minors, among others.
- Diagnosis: The consortium will continue to work on diagnostic analyses that help to drive programmes and policies, as well as to measure the impact of those already in place.
Improving coordination
- Increasing the impact and improving coordination at the national level among the participants in the consortium, as well as with other agents present and active in this area. The aim is to create a public-private platform in which various entities coordinate to implement awareness-raising actions concerning the use of the Internet by children with nationwide impact.
Strengthen its presence in INHOPE
- Enhance the contribution of the Spanish SIC, INCIBE, in the European Commission’s Expert Group on Safer Internet for Children in the pan-European network INSAFE and in the international network INHOPE, cin order to facilitate knowledge and experiences that contribute to better provision of services and setting public policies to promote the safe and responsible use of the Internet by minors in Spain.
Beneficiaries
Children and their parents and educators are the main direct beneficiaries of the project through all the actions that will be executed.
Results See results page
Project consortium
SIC-SPAIN 2.0 is led and coordinated by INCIBE. The consortium therefore consists of:
(Coordinator) | INCIBEIt is a company that forms part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation through the Secretariat of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence and has consolidated its position as a leader in the development of the cybersecurity and digital trust of citizens, the academic and research network, professionals, companies, especially for strategic sectors. With an activity based on research, service provision and coordination with agents with competences in the area, INCIBE contributes to building cybersecurity at the national and international level. Its contribution to this project is based on coordinating all the partners and participating in all its workstreams: awareness-raising, the helpline and the reporting line, lending continuity to its management of the Spanish SIC, IS4K. |
(Beneficiary) | Ministry of Interior (Spain)The Spanish Ministry of Interior is the Department of the General State Administration responsible for the proposal and execution of the National Government's policy on citizen security (State security forces and bodies, penitentiary institutions, civil protection, road safety, etc.), guaranteeing the exercise of the fundamental rights set out in the Constitution, foreigners and international protection, as well as ensuring the smooth running of electoral processes. Its contribution to this project is to collaborate in the consolidation of the Spanish SIC through the development of the hotline, given that it has the competencies in this field. |
(Beneficiary) | Association of Communication UsersAssociation of Communication Users (AUC, for its Spanish acronym) is an organisation whose main purpose is to defend the interests of citizens as users of the media, recipients of its messages and a possible target of its content. Its activities are focused on, among other things, protecting young people and children. It has extensive experience concerning the project due to our participation in the Self-Regulatory Code on Television Content and Childhood, the Film Rating Commission, the Internet Governance Forum and advising various Internet suppliers and distributors. AUC’s contribution to this project focuses on benchmarking the situation in Europe, analysing the content age rating systems in various countries to establish an international rating system. It will carry out field research with different actors involved in the field such as content-generation professionals and users, content exchange/OTT platforms and regulatory authorities in the area of telecommunications, audiovisuals and the Internet. It will prepare a proposal for a co-regulatory system for online content tagging, and will also develop a website to host the results of the online content tagging system. |
(Beneficiary) | EmpantalladosEmpantallados.com is a free online project aimed at Spanish-speaking parents, whose goal is to help them to educate their children in healthy use of technology. Empantallados is a Fomento de Centros de Enseñanza initiative, in collaboration with numerous experts in education, health and technology. Empantallados will support the Consortium’s mission by creating and disseminating online resources aimed to parents, to encourage them to make the most of the opportunities the Internet offers children, beyond a risk-based focus; and it will carry out an annual survey of the impact of technology on families. Moreover, Empantallados has institutional relationships and agreements with parents’ associations, which can amplify the impact of the activities of Spain’s Safer Internet Centre on the audience of parents. |
(Beneficiary) | EU Kids Online Spain (UPV/EHU)The UPV/EHU team of researchers is the Spanish team in EU Kids Online, a multinational network of researchers seeking to improve knowledge of opportunities, risks and the online security of European minors. These researchers use various methods to map the experiences of minors and their parents on the Internet, in collaboration with various domestic and European political players. It was funded by the European Commission’s Better Internet for Kids programme. This team’s contribution to the project will be to undertake research among Primary Teachers focused on four main aspects: their use of ICT, their digital competences, their pupils’ conflict resolution habits on the Internet and the digital infrastructure of the centres where they work. |
(Beneficiary) | Fundación Aprender a Mirar (FAAM)The Fundación Aprender a Mirar is a non-profit organisation that works in defence of users of audiovisual media, especially children and adolescents, through training, information, preventative social action, reporting and defending and promoting values. It acts as a consultant to drive content quality, with a positive focus that guarantees child protection. It promotes knowledge and use of netiquette, efficient management of privacy and identity on the net and media education. It supports and disseminates neuroscience research related to perception, cognition and learning process through screens and the Internet, in order to improve educational processes. To fulfil its objectives, Fundación Aprender a Mirar has the Audiovisual Education Programme, Contraste (PEAC), it organises conferences and workshop on specific topics (for example, hypersexualisation on social networks and addiction to pornography), it runs competitions and challenges to promote young people’s creativity and it generates campaigns (#ShesAPerson, #LiveYourRealLife) and studies supporting then and which help them to gain visibility in the media, among other actions. FAAM offers a Web/ App, which are updated daily and a monthly Magazine, where it analyses digital content and fosters critical thinking and audiovisual and digital culture. What’s more, through the Zapping Prices, it promotes positive online content for children. It produces guides in collaboration with the Directorate-General of the Family and Children of the Region of Madrid. It specialises in technology addictions and cyberbullying. In the latter, it has launched, together with two other entities, the collaborative platform PDA Bullying. |
(Beneficiary) | Fundación CibervoluntariosThe aim of Fundación Cibervoluntarios, a pioneering organisation in technological volunteering, is to alleviate social inequality, generate social innovation and empowerment of citizens, promote human rights and achieve the aims of the 2030 Agenda through the social use of ICT. Since 2001, Fundación Cibervoluntarios has promoted digital transformation with a social impact, expanding the rights, opportunities and capacities of thousands of digitally-vulnerable people through the use and knowledge of all kinds of technological tools. To do this, they work with a network of more than 1,900 cyber volunteers and collaborate with more than 900 national and international bodies and organisations. With all their activities they reach 60,000 people annually. This success was recognised by the Financial Times as one of the 100 entities leading the Digital Transformation in Europe, and more recently by the magazine FORBES as one of “the Other 100 Largest Fortunes in Spain. In this project, Cibervoluntarios will organise training campaigns on how to prevent digital gender-based violence in educational centres. |
(Beneficiary) | GaptainGaptain is an impactful EdTech organisation whose mission is to help Schools and Families in education and in assisting children in the digital sphere. Through the Education and Technology, it seeks to drive a cybersecurity culture among citizen, while measuring its impact and publishes research on the usage habits and trends to improve coexistence and social cohesion. Its work is focused on facilitating the 3 fundamentals of digital wellbeing: 1) cybersecure environments 2) prevention and digital competence 3) technology for supervising digital activity. Through the Segureskola programme ((School + Families) and the Kids Centric methodology, it creates a positive impact and improves the coexistence and cybersecurity of the educational sphere, training the teaching staff, pupils and families in “prevention and digital competence” in a personalised and effective manner. Other Gaptain resources: Online magazine ‘Digital Education and Wellbeing’, video channel Digital education, online itinerary ‘Educating in digital’. |
(Beneficiary) | iCmediaiCmedia is the Federation of Associations of Media Consumers and Users, which promotes various initiatives to improve the quality of audiovisual content. Its contribution to this project is to prepare a white paper to bring together guidelines for being a responsible influencer and it will include best practices with real cases obtained from leading influencers in different areas. It will also train educators and make proposals for dissemination and for training for young people. |
(Beneficiary) | Pantallas AmigasIt was created in 2004 to promote education for cyber citizens and digital welfare, with a focus on children’s rights. Its actions include the creation of teaching resources, running awareness-raising courses and informative workshops, advising institutions, educational centres and families, developing training plans and contributing to the development of public policies. It has implemented actions in more than 15 countries in Latin America and Europe. It collaborates with UNODC and is a member of the Trust and Safety Council on Twitter. This project contributes in two ways: 1. Developing a video game to raise awareness and give training regarding misinformation. 2. Organising the “Connected Citizens” conference in order to give special importance and focus to online games and video platforms such as YouTube and parental conflict resolution. |
(Beneficiary) | Plataforma de infanciaThe Plataforma de Infancia is an alliance of plural, public-spirited, democratic and politically- and religiously-independent non-profit organisations that works to achieve full fulfilment of the rights of boys, girls and teenagers. Its main aim is to ensure the welfare of children; to do so, among other measures, it publicises and defends their rights and promotes collaboration and participation in all public and private bodies related to it and children’s participation and volunteering in non-profit organisations. The Plataforma de Infancia’s contribution to the Project is to ensuring that participating boys, girls and teenagers themselves may send their proposals, opinions and experiences on safe use of the Internet. On the online participation space www.cibercorresponsales.org, the boys and girls participating in the processes will be able to make their contributions to a safe space, where their rights are respected and taken into account. Each year, an in-person meeting of the Cibercorresponsales network will be held to debate security topics, as well as other small training and debate spaces in which the educational teams will also be borne in mind. |
(Beneficiary) | Universidad Complutense de MadridThe Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, for its Spanish acronym) is the largest Spanish university and one of the most prestigious in Europe. Its centres are divided into two campuses: Ciudad Universitaria in Moncloa and Somosaguas. It also has some centres in the city of Madrid. UCM consists of 26 faculties, 10 affiliated centres, 37 university institutes, 7 professional schools, 9 research support and ICTS centres, 14 university clinics and hospitals, 5 UCM halls of residence and 2 centres abroad. Its 32 libraries contain a total of 3,000,000 volumes. Its contributions to this project are: carrying out a quantitative survey on the cybersecurity of pre-adolescent and adolescent girls on social networks focusing on the analysis of revenge porn and a qualitative study of use of technology in education focused on children’s opinions about challenges in “online school”. |
(Beneficiary) | Universidad Rey Juan CarlosThe Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC, for its Spanish acronym) is a young public university with several campuses in the Madrid metropolitan area, whose mission is to foster innovative research and high-quality education in one of the fastest-growing regions of Spain. The URJC has had enjoyed major growth, reaching almost 50,000 students and about 1,100 lecturers; it is currently the second-largest public university in Madrid by student numbers. The URJC has an international reach, with an academic community consists of 5,000 foreigners from 60 countries. As an academic and multidisciplinary research body, the Rey Juan Carlos University promotes research aimed at economic and social development, fostering and enhancing research activity, the dissemination and transfer of knowledge, and research results to society. Since 2016, the URJC has participated in more than 70 EU projects with total EU funding of some 13 million euros (including two ERC Starting Grants, two Consolidator Grants and two Proofs of Concept), of which 37 belong to the H2020 Programme. The URJC has actively participated in Marie Sklodoswska Curie actions, acting as both a host institution for researchers, and as a participant in individual scholarship actions. This team’s contribution to the project will focus on diagnostic work, identifying and research the nutritional habits promoted on children’s YouTube channels, as well as the proposed strategy for raising awareness in this area. |
Advisory Board
(Advisory) | Spanish Data Protection AgencyThe Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD, for its Spanish acronym) is the independent state control authority responsible, with full capacity to act according to public and private law, to ensure compliance with privacy/data protection regulations. It is related to the Government through the Ministry of Justice. It guarantees and protects citizens’ fundamental right to protection of their personal data. |
(Advisory) | The National Institute of Educational Technology and Teacher TrainingThe National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF) is the unit of the Ministry of Education and Professional Training responsible for integrating ICT and Teacher Training into the non-university levels of education. It has the rank of a Sub-directorate General, and is part of the Directorate-General of Evaluation and Territorial Cooperation, which in turn is part of the Secretariat of State of Education. INTEF carries out the functions allocated to the Directorate-General of preparation and dissemination of curricular materials and other teacher support documents, the design of teacher training models and the design and launch of specific programmes, in collaboration with the regions, aimed at updating teachers’ scientific and pedagogic knowledge and training at the various levels of education. |
Related European Projects
 2016 - 2019 | Internet Segura for Kids (IS4K)Internet Security Center for children in Spain promotes the safe and responsible use of the Internet and new technologies among children and adolescents. In line with the European BIK (Better Internet for Kids) strategy, is part of the pan-European network INSAFE of Internet Safety Centers. Website IS4K |
 2019 - 2020 | SIC-SPAINSafer Internet Centre Spain The SIC-SPAIN project continues and extends the service provided by Internet Segura for Kids (IS4K). It promotes the safe and responsible use of the Internet and new technologies among children and adolescents. In line with the European BIK (Better Internet for Kids) strategy, is part of the pan-European network INSAFE of Internet Safety Centers. |
