On May 17th, 2024, was the kick-off meeting of the Be.DiSSCo-FED project, the Belgian Federal initiative to align with the development of the EU DiSSCo Research Infrastructure, the EU funded project for the digitalization of the collections of European Natural History museums. The Institute of Natural Sciences (Brussels) and the Royal Museum for Central Africa, leaders of Be.DiSSCo-FED, welcomed at the Institute of Natural Sciences the partners of the project to discuss the technical and governance aspects of the two years project and organize the work:

• Meise Botanical Garden
• Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF)
• The Belgian Biodiversity Platform
• The University of Mons
• The University of Liege

Be.DiSSCo-FED is funded by BELSPO until June 2026 and has for main objectives to :

• Strengthen the roles of Belgium at the Federal and national levels within DiSSCo RI, and emphasize the role of RBINS as the Belgian National Node of DiSSCo EU
• Define a strategy for the DiSSCo RI based on the specialization tools, a prototype platform developed with CETAF allowing the gathering, categorizing, storage and analysis of the expertise related to collections that are lying among Natural Sciences institutions.
• Use the diversity of the Belgian collections to develop and test a standardized identification of the collections, and to propose a dedicated strategy and tailored tools to the DiSSCo community and stakeholders.​
• Make digitalized data FAIR and Open-Source using internationally recognized standard(s). Stay tuned for more news regarding the development of the project!