I used to work for a company that gets Gaia-X money. I will not mention concrete names, so you'll have to believe this anonymous source, me, choosing to remain vague to not be identified.
All we did for Gaia-X was the paperwork to get the money. It had zero impact on anything we actually did. Somebody I know who knew what other firms receiving Gaia-X funds did told me the others did even less than us. We certainly did not take it very seriously, apart from it being a great source of free money, and I say that as someone who reported quite a few developer hours for Gaia-X.
I think at most this project is about sending some money to some European firms, with little regard for actual outcomes, kind of as a concealed subsidy. I'm not sure if those who started the project actually wanted that outcome in the first place? A lot of these things are just ways to use the current system to achieve goals that the system does not directly allow. It could just be incompetence, but it could also be the case that somebody knows exactly what they created with Gaia-X and is perfectly okay with the outcome.
It's not great, but this is far from abnormal. I worked for a company (not my current employer) that got R&D grants or tax breaks (I'm not sure which) from a government. The engineers were asked to come up with defined projects that could be justified as R&D in the way the government wanted. We did, and we actually did the projects, but might have done them anyway.
Governments want to grow areas of their economies that they think could be beneficial. It's not acceptable to just hand out cash, and that can be trivially abused, so they put a little work around it to make sure the right companies are applying, and they tie it to token artifacts to make it seem more specific. Some companies commit outright fraud, but they're likely the minority and it's just a cost of the program, some put in a ton of effort and do it properly, and that's fine, and the majority just carry on doing the work they were already doing that the government was trying to encourage, and they'll hopefully be just a bit more successful as a result of the extra cash.
It's all a bit silly, but I don't think it's malicious or actually that bad if you assume that the government isn't trying to achieve a specific outcome beyond growing a sector, despite what they say.
> some put in a ton of effort and do it properly, and that's fine...
I mostly agree with you, except with this statement. It's not fine, the companies that fall into this trap are wasting their time and resources on something that is not a real opportunity. This is the main source of waste imho and unfortunately happens a lot in EU projects.
The Australian government R&DTI operates this way. Nearly every job I've had I've had to fill out specific timesheets and project descriptions to fit the gov's reqs to get the tax incentive.
The wastefulness of EU is the real reason people want their countries out of it.
There seem to be zero journalists covering EU shenanigans so everyone just get the news from people in the trenches. While our local politicians gets fired for buying chocolate on the wrong account (true story).
I have met several Brexiteers on Quora, and not one of them could give a sensible reason for their vote. I don't mean a reason that I would like, I mean just a reason that could make any sense.
I still hope some smart Brexiteers exist, but I've not been lucky enough to meet any of them.
All we did for Gaia-X was the paperwork to get the money. It had zero impact on anything we actually did. Somebody I know who knew what other firms receiving Gaia-X funds did told me the others did even less than us. We certainly did not take it very seriously, apart from it being a great source of free money, and I say that as someone who reported quite a few developer hours for Gaia-X.
I think at most this project is about sending some money to some European firms, with little regard for actual outcomes, kind of as a concealed subsidy. I'm not sure if those who started the project actually wanted that outcome in the first place? A lot of these things are just ways to use the current system to achieve goals that the system does not directly allow. It could just be incompetence, but it could also be the case that somebody knows exactly what they created with Gaia-X and is perfectly okay with the outcome.