Technical convergence of the DSBA

The promotion of the so-called data economy is one of the main priorities on which the European Union, in general, and Spain, in particular, are currently working. Having a single digital market for data exchange is one of the keys to achieving this momentum among the Member States, and data spaces come into play for this purpose.

Data Spaces Business Alliance (DSBA)

A data space is an ecosystem capable of realising the voluntary sharing of data among its participants, while respecting their sovereignty over it, i.e. being able to set the conditions for its access and use. The DSBA, founded in 2021, is composed of the main actors in the definition of standards, models and technological frameworks for the construction and operation of data spaces. Specifically, the alliance is composed of the Big Data Value Association (BDVA), the FIWARE Foundation and the Gaia-X European Association for Data and Cloud AISBL and the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA). The purpose of the alliance is to agree on a common technological framework that avoids technological fragmentation of the activity, as well as harmonisation in messaging and dissemination activities.

Technical Convergence Discussion Document

On the technological side, the DSBA published in September 2022 a first approximation of the desired technological convergence.

The document technically analyses the anchor points for creating trusted data spaces, federated catalogues and shared markets, and the ability to define data use policies (based on the use of a common language). This ability to share while respecting the sovereignty of the data owner is what makes these spaces novel and truly disruptive, offering for the first time technical elements with which to control the risks associated with information sharing.

The document explains, step by step and from a purely technical perspective, the actions to be addressed by each of the identified roles, with the purpose of guiding potential scenarios that could occur in reality.

To achieve technical convergence, the partnership agreed on the development of a minimum viable framework (MVF) based on three pillars:

• Interoperability in data exchange through the use of the standard NGSI-LD data exchange protocol/API and the extended Smart Data Models for the adoption of the information model defined by the IDS architecture.
• Sovereignty and trust in data exchange through the adoption of a decentralised model (Self-Sovereign Identity) as proposed by Gaia-X (with its Trust Framework) that would use the DLT (Distributed Ledger Technologies) promoted by the European Commission (EBSI). The result will be a trust environment compatible with the EU's eIDAS 2.0 regulation.
• Value creation (brokering) services consisting of a decentralised data catalogue and trading services based on TM Forum standards.

The alliance believes that this MVF would be a good starting point from which to work towards the desired technological convergence, counting and reusing parts of the current solutions provided by the different suppliers.

Example of a public data marketplace

The paper gives the example of a data service provider offering its service in a public data marketplace, so that consumers can easily access this offer. In addition, providers can also delegate access to their users to modify attributes of the service they contract.

This is an example that can be seen in detail in the document, which is interesting because different authentication systems, security and access policies and, in short, different systems that must interoperate with each other come into play.

Additionally, an example of integration between the Data Marketplace and a data catalogue is presented using the approach followed by the European Horizon 2020 project 'Digital Open Marketplace Ecosystem' (DOME). In this way, offers are created in the shared catalogue and can be subsequently consulted following the defined access policies.

The future of the DSBA

The DSBA considers that the aforementioned MVF is only the first step towards the convergence of the different existing architectures and technologies in the construction of data spaces. The next steps of the alliance will take into account the roles assigned to each of the participants. More specifically:

• IDSA: Develops data space architectures and standards. In particular, a model for connectors to ensure sovereign data sharing in a scalable way.

• Gaia-X: Develops and deploys an architecture, a governance model according to business specifications for sectoral data spaces, as well as a toolkit (Gaia-X Federation Services toolkit) to instantiate interoperability, composability and transparency of infrastructure and cloud data services.

• FIWARE: With a technology stack that comes from the world of Digital Twins, the community develops software components that allow to implement the construction of data spaces.

The DSBA has also set itself the following priority objectives:

• The compatibility of the IDS architecture with an identity management mechanism based on decentralised identifiers.
• The integration of a federated catalogue such as the one proposed with the metadata broker proposed in the IDS architecture.
• The definition of a common vocabulary.
• Advancing jointly with the work of the Data Space Support Center (a programme funded by the European Commission, where these associations play a leading role), as well as with the standardisation efforts based on the EC's Smart Middleware Platform (SIMPL) project.

Content prepared by Juan Mañes, expert in Data Governance.

The contents and views expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author.