European support and coordination actions for the deployment of Data Spaces

Data has become the great transforming power of society. Beyond the more mercantilist view, its capacity to generate knowledge, drive innovation and empower individuals and communities is undeniable. Indeed, it is a resource with which to address, from an innovative perspective, major environmental, social and health challenges, enabling collaboration between actors, driving innovation and improving accountability.

Following European guidelines such as the European Data Strategy, the challenge now is to promote the circulation of data for the benefit of all, by pooling data in key sectors with the creation of  common and interoperabledata spaces. A data space is an ecosystem where the voluntary sharing of its participants' data takes place within an environment of sovereignty, trust and security, established through integrated governance, organisational, regulatory and technical mechanisms. Data spaces are key to the development of the data economy, enabling access, exchange and legitimate re-use, positioning data as a non-rivalrous resource, whose utility grows as its use becomes more widespread, in a clear example of the network effect.

What are the Coordinated Support Actions (CSA)?

In order to foster the development of data spaces, the European Commission's Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) is funding a series of Coordinated Support Actions (CSA) to foster their development. Most of these actions have a funding of around one million euros per project and a duration of approximately one year, with an expected completion date in the fourth quarter of 2023. Their results should contribute to the objectives of the DIGITAL programme, which aims to bridge the gap between research and deployment of digital technologies, and to facilitate the transfer of research results to the market, to the benefit of European citizens and businesses, especially small and medium-sized ones.

Each concrete action focuses on a particular sector of economic activity seeking, based on a mapping of the data landscape of each sector concerned, to contact and connect relevant stakeholders, seeking to collaboratively develop a shared strategic roadmap. This shared roadmap ultimately aims to eventually build up the corresponding sectoral data spacesin subsequent phases. During the process, clear objectives and key results are defined to inspire, support and motivate all stakeholders to contribute and use high quality sectoral data as a basis for innovation and value generation.

In order to carry out this roadmap, a comprehensive inventory of existing platforms that already share relevant data has been drawn up. In addition, each CSA project has focused, through different working groups and stakeholder workshops, on developing recommendations on governance models for data spaces and digital business models for their sector. The aim is to identify key success factors and outline how a data space can create value and benefits not only for the sector in question but also for other sectors with which it is interlinked. In addition, plans to address the technical and organisational challenges that drive the use of interoperability standards are made in the different projects in close collaboration with the Data Spatial Support Centre (DSSC) in order to align with the European Technological Framework for Data Spaces.

Where can I find up-to-date information on CSAs?

Concrete information on the state of play of the different coordination and support actions can be found on their websites through the following links:

	DATES (Tourism)
	Tourism Data Space (Tourism)
	DS4SKills (Skills)
	PrepDSpace4Mobility (Mobility)
	AgriDataSpace (Agri-food)
	Great (Environmental)
	DataSp4ce (Industrial)
	DS4SSCC (Smarts Cities)

The outcome of these coordinated support actions will provide the information and the basis for the correct execution of the projects for the development and implementation ("deployments") of the Common European Data Spaces, which will be supported by different European programmes. This will catalyse the creation of a single data market, based on reliable and quality data, which will enable the digitisation of industries' value chains. Moreover, its effective development will support the European Union's objectives of achieving a green transition and a digital transformation, and of strengthening its resilience and strategic autonomy.