Why is it important to have a legal partner in a data project?
At DATAMITE, our goal is to encompass every facet of data exchange and monetisation. To this end, our consortium includes partners that extend beyond the technological and monetary fields, such as the Law and Internet Foundation (LIF). LIF is responsible for providing thorough insights into the EU legal framework for data transfers, with a particular focus on the Regulation on the Free Flow of Non-Personal Data in the European Union and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
To illustrate the importance of having a legal partner on a project like DATAMITE, we interviewed Polina Petrova and Daniela Ilieva from LIF. They explained how their work enables the formulation of tailored legal and ethical requirements specific to the technical components of DATAMITE, ensuring their compliance with relevant legal and ethical requirements.
Watch the video here and below.
DATAMITE Plenary Meeting in Bilbao
From 8 to 10 April, the DATAMITE consortium held its first plenary meeting of 2025 in Bilbao, Spain. This important meeting was held to discuss the steps needed to achieve the project's goal before DATAMITE ends, presumably by the end of the year. As at the previous plenary meeting in Aachen, the agenda included a CodeCamp day with the project's developers on the first day, followed by two days with the entire consortium. Each work package presented its progress and future steps.
The first day was spent at CodeCamp. This edition focused on coding and component integration. Participants were split into groups and worked on specific tasks related to Work Packages 2 (Data Sharing Mechanisms and Data Sovereignty) and 3 (Data Governance, Quality, Security and Support Modules). Through collaborative sessions and structured objectives, the teams made significant progress in developing and integrating these components. This culminated in a joint wrap-up session, during which the teams presented their achievements and planned their next steps.
The remaining partners who were not involved in the CodeCamp joined on 9 and 10 April. The two-day plenary meeting focused on reviewing progress and aligning the next steps for all work packages. On the first day, the project coordinator (ITI) began with updates, outlining the project's current status, future deliverables, and important recommendations. Sessions covered essential topics such as data asset sizing, KPI development, legal applicability, energy consumption. Each topic was discussed through concise, action-oriented presentations.
One of the day's highlights was the interactive 'Gender Bias' session, which was led by Margit Hofer from ZSI. She illustrated how poor data quality affects not only a company's revenues, but also society, resulting in biases in AI models relating to race and gender. Approaching the topic from a dynamic, brainstorming perspective as a project was very instructive and inspiring.
In the afternoon, Pilots 5 and 6 were spotlighted to demonstrate progress on real-world integration. This was followed by an in-depth exploration of open-source business models and Eclipse ecosystem opportunities.
The second day covered the remaining pilot updates (Pilots 1–4), communications KPIs, the intellectual property strategy, and the Data Monetisation Maturity Model. The meeting concluded with a discussion about future training materials, preparing the consortium for the next implementation phase.
In addition to three days of intensive work, the DATAMITE consortium enjoyed a visit to the Guggenheim Museum, followed by a traditional Basque dinner in the centre of Bilbao. Many thanks to our colleagues at Tecnalia for hosting the plenary meeting.
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DATAMITE at the Data Spaces Symposium
The Data Spaces Symposium took place on 11-12 March in Warsaw, Poland. Hosted by the Data Spaces Support Centre and the Data Spaces Business Alliance, it is the premier global event dedicated to the future of data spaces, bringing together the brightest minds, leading innovators and pioneering organisations to shape a connected, data-driven world. The 2025 edition was also embedded in the Polish ICT Week. This made the event the perfect platform to showcase the latest market-ready use cases and advanced technology solutions for existing and emerging data spaces.
As in previous editions, DATAMITE did not want to miss out on this important event in the world of the European data economy and the development of European data spaces, two of the fundamental pillars of the project. While last year DATAMITE participated as part of the EUDATA+ cluster in one of the parallel sessions of Data Week, this year DATAMITE, through several of its consortium members, participated in the Data Spaces Symposium with several sessions and a booth.
Daniel Saez Domingo from ITI, the institution that coordinates DATAMITE, took part in the 'Mobility & tourism: Creating value for participants in mobility and tourism data spaces' session. During his presentation, he explained how the DATAMITE platform helps SMEs to extract the most appropriate data from data spaces for their needs, while maintaining the highest quality and reliability of data, thus improving their data monetisation. This session was moderated by Mariano Blaya Andreu from the International Data Spaces Association, a member of the DATAMITE Consortium.
During the 'Agriculture track: Towards development of the agriculture data spaces', DATAMITE had a triple representation. Marcin Płóciennik from Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) led the track and gave the presentation 'Digital framework supporting data monetization for agricultural data space', which mainly focused on showing their use case in DATAMITE as an example of how data spaces can improve the agricultural sector's needs for better data use and data monetisation. Another PSNC member, Raul Palma, took part in the agricultural session too. Finally, the agriculture track closed with a panel discussion in which Marcin Płóciennik and Raul Palma were joined by Marko Turpeinen, CEO at 1001 Lakes, a member of the DATAMITE consortium, which focuses on the development of DATAMITE monetisation strategies.
In addition, during the two days of the conference, PSNC had an exhibition stand to showcase the results of EU-funded projects in which it is involved. One of these projects is DATAMITE.
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DATAMITE Meet Up event
On 6 February, the DATAMITE project hosted the DATAMITE Meet Up event at the OTE headquarters in Athens, Greece, under the theme 'Bridging Research and Industry in EU-funded Innovation'.
Bringing together Europe's leading innovators, researchers, policy makers and industry leaders to foster collaboration, accelerate data-driven progress and create a unified strategy for Europe's digital future, the event was a unique networking opportunity bringing together researchers and industry professionals involved in EU-funded projects.
The day was divided into five panel discussions where participants explored cutting-edge research, shared insights and discussed needs, concerns and solutions in critical areas such as data ethics, privacy, cybersecurity, AI, IoT and sustainable innovation. The event was livestreamed. If you missed it, you can watch it on our YouTube channel. Do not miss it!
The five panels were:
- Creating Value in Data Marketplaces: The role of Data Spaces. Opportunities & Risks: Explore the growing popularity of data marketplaces, where organisations buy and sell data, and the potential value and risks involved.
- Data Exploitation in the Health Sector: How healthcare organisations can benefit or even generate revenue from data assets, including best practices, risks and innovative business models.
- Data Monetization Strategies & the Value of Data as an Asset: How organisations can generate revenue from data assets, including best practices, risks and innovative business models.
- Data-Driven Transformation Across Industries: Lessons and Innovations in Key Sectors: How data is transforming specific industries such as healthcare, finance, retail, manufacturing and transportation, highlighting sector-specific challenges, innovations and best practices in using data to drive growth and efficiency.
- Privacy and Security in the Age of Data – Finding a Balance through Legal and Ethical Challenges: Deep dive into the inherent tension between data monetisation and user privacy, focusing on ways to balance revenue generation with respect for user rights.
Throughout the event, a team of photographers worked to capture all the moments that made the DATAMITE Meet Up event such a special day. All the photos can be viewed here.
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Save the date: DATAMITE Meet Up event
The DATAMITE project is thrilled to invite you to the DATAMITE Meetup event - a unique networking opportunity bringing together researchers and industry professionals involved in EU-funded projects.
The DATAMITE Project Meetup, hosted by OTE's IT Innovation Center under the theme 'Bridging Research and Industry in EU-funded Innovation', will bring together Europe's top innovators, researchers, policy makers, and industry leaders to foster collaboration, accelerate data-driven progress and create a unified strategy for Europe's digital future.
Key information
- When: 6 February, 2025, at 9:00 Local time.
- Where: OTE HQs, Athens, Greece
The day will be divided into five panel discussions where participants will explore cutting-edge research, share insights and discuss needs, concerns and solutions in critical areas such as data ethics, privacy, cybersecurity, AI, IoT and sustainable innovation.
The five panels are:
- Creating Value in Data Marketplaces: The role of Data Spaces. Opportunities & Risks: Explore the growing popularity of data marketplaces, where organisations buy and sell data, and the potential value and risks involved.
- Data Exploitation in the Health Sector: How healthcare organisations can benefit or even generate revenue from data assets, including best practices, risks and innovative business models.
- Data Monetization Strategies & the Value of Data as an Asset: How organisations can generate revenue from data assets, including best practices, risks and innovative business models.
- Data-Driven Transformation Across Industries: Lessons and Innovations in Key Sectors: How data is transforming specific industries such as healthcare, finance, retail, manufacturing and transportation, highlighting sector-specific challenges, innovations and best practices in using data to drive growth and efficiency.
- Privacy and Security in the Age of Data – Finding a Balance through Legal and Ethical Challenges: Deep dive into the inherent tension between data monetisation and user privacy, focusing on ways to balance revenue generation with respect for user rights.
Watch the live stream recording here.
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Driving Data Innovation: Progress and future plans for DATAMITE pilots
The DATAMITE project is steadily progressing through its six innovative pilots, each addressing unique data management challenges and demonstrating DATAMITE's potential for innovation in data sharing, governance and quality assessment. With milestones set through 2025, these pilots will strengthen the DATAMITE framework's ability to address diverse sectoral challenges and provide sustainable, scalable solutions for data sharing and management.
Here is an overview of the progress and upcoming milestones for each of these pilots:
Pilot 1: Data exchange between companies within the same corporate group
The infrastructure for data exchange is in place, with an on-premises DATAMITE ecosystem using PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Cassandra. Test scenarios have been established, and a beta test API, developed using Django, facilitates interactions for OBREMO and FACSA use cases. Sensitive data management is in line with DATAMITE's legal advice, with problematic and controversial data being removed. Finally, cloud deployment testing is underway in collaboration with ITI.
Future steps
- Deployment of the DATAMITE framework, at least in the on-premises infrastructure.
- Communication and connection testing with API, with additional integration in case of interest.
- Collect and analyse initial KPIs.
- Produce multimedia materials to showcase test results.
- Drafting the pilot report.
Pilot 2: Corporate Multi-Site Data Exchange
The DATAMITE framework has been deployed in a development infrastructure. Test scenarios and synthetic datasets have been prepared in Month 23 (November 2024). The team is refining the data structures and running preliminary evaluations of the framework's performance.
Future steps
- Full deployment of the framework in the pilot development infrastructure.
- Finalise and execute use case validation.
- Set up production pilot infrastructure in Azure.
- Evaluate the DATAMITE framework on different operating systems, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux flavours, to compare with traditional distributions such as Ubuntu or Debian.
- Submit a publication describing the pilot to the next AIAI 2025 conference.
Pilot 3: Offering Data to Service Providers with DataSpaces
Component deployment and testing began in month 17 (May) and is scheduled to be completed by month 25 (January 2025). The current priorities include deploying and testing the relevant DATAMITE components, finalizing the test scenarios, and contributing to the course design. Additionally, the deployment will soon be moved from Google Cloud VM to a permanent solution.
Future steps
- Carry out the first iteration of scenario testing between November 2024 and the end of January 2025, completing component deployment and testing, and gathering feedback to refine the second iteration of scenarios testing from March 2025.
- Migration of the deployment to an on-premises infrastructure.
- Deployment of Data Sharing components and publication of anonymised sensitive and composite data products.
- Draft the initial pilot report.
Pilot 4: Leverage Electricity Distribution Open Data
The internal infrastructure, which will be based on a MS Azure environment, is ready for deployment, while Data Quality, Data Governance and Data Support Tools have already started to be deployed. Testing will be divided into three levels and is focused on improving data collection and sharing processes.
Future steps
- Complete and validate pilot test scenarios.
- Deploy and test components from the Data Support Tools, Data Quality and Data Governance modules until the end of January 2025, which will be the focus of the first two levels of the test scenarios
- Draft the initial pilot report
Pilot 5: Connecting eDWIN to Data Markets
The team has completed the integration with Pontus-X for the agri-food sector. Meteorological data has been integrated with AIM and normalisation pipelines for pest and production (agrifood domain) datasets are operational.
Future steps
- Complete the first automated data workflow.
- Integrate eDWIN with DATAMITE data quality and data governance tools.
- Conduct test scenarios and complete demonstrators by the end of February 2025.
Pilot 6: Connecting MISTRAL to the EU AI-ON-Demand Platform
Resource allocation on the cloud is underway, along with the deployment of the development environment to test the DATAMITE framework. The team is also currently defining data quality checks and analysing data connectivity for external catalogues such as AI-on-Demand and the Mistral Open Data Catalogue.
Future steps
- Integration of the DATAMITE framework with the Mistal platform.
- Implementation of a Mistral connector to retrieve (meta)data in the DATAMITE framework.
- Dissemination of the data catalogue with data sharing to a local open data catalogue on the one hand, and to an external AI-on-demand platform on the other.
- Set up user-defined custom rules.
- Enable data quality checks with the Data Quality Module.
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DATAMITE takes the stage at the first Gaia-X Hub Spain Data Space Summit
The first Gaia-X Hub Spain Data Space Summit ("Primera cumbre de espacios datos", as it is called in Spanish) took place in Madrid on 3 and 4 December. The most relevant international event on Data Spaces in Spanish brought together prominent leaders of national initiatives, government representatives and European project managers in the field of Data Spaces, Technology and Artificial Intelligence, with a special focus on use cases and ongoing projects, to share their knowledge and experiences in a dynamic and collaborative environment.
DATAMITE, as a European project focused on the monetisation of data and data spaces, coordinated by a Spanish entity (ITI), did not miss the event. Jordi Arjona Aroca, from ITI and technical coordinator of DATAMITE, presented the key aspects of the project and how the DATAMITE framework will revolutionise the data monetisation landscape in a session entitled 'Technology for data spaces' on 4 December.
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DATAMITE plenary meeting in Aachen
From 26 to 28 November, the DATAMITE consortium met in Aachen for its second - and last - plenary meeting of 2024. As at the previous plenary meeting in Poznan, the agenda was divided into a first day of CodeCamp with the developers involved in the project, followed by two days with the whole consortium, where each work package had its moment in the spotlight with presentations and/or workshops.
The first day was spent at the CodeCamp, as a warm-up for the plenary sessions that would take place over the next two days. This edition was less about coding and more about practical activities and shaping the future of the DATAMITE framework. All DATAMITE design and coding partners were divided into parallel sessions, according to their needs, in order to get the most out of CodeCamp.
On 27 and 28 November the remaining partners who were not involved in the codecamp joined in. The DATAMITE consortium exchanged ideas, discussed the results of the review meeting and set the roadmap for the final year of the project. In contrast to previous plenary meetings, and despite the structure of the agenda being divided into work packages, the Aachen meeting was much more practical and focused on encouraging the participation of all partners in all work packages through more interactive workshops and sessions.
Some of the main topics discussed were the six pilot projects of the project and the future steps to be taken before the end of 2025. Exciting things to come next year!
In addition to three intense days of work, the DATAMITE consortium enjoyed a guided tour of the Aachen Christmas Market and a visit to the Demonstration Factory, which is a central component of the Smart Logistics Cluster on the RWTH Aachen campus, thanks to the colleagues from FIR RWTH Aachen University who hosted this plenary meeting.
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DATAMITE presented at the E.DSO's Innovation and Research Committee
On 28 November 2024, the Innovation and Research Committee (IRCO) of the European Distribution System Operators (E.DSO) held an internal meeting focusing on 'Setting up national data sharing frameworks and platforms. This was an important date for DATAMITE’s partner, HEDNO, who took the opportunity to present the project. HEDNO delivered a 15-minute presentation titled 'Data Monetisation, Interoperability, Trade and Exchange', after which there was a 10-minute Q&A session during which attendees could share their thoughts on the project and learn more about DATAMITE's work.
E.DSO is the key interface between Europe’s Distribution System Operators (DSOs) and the European institutions. E.DSO gathers 35 leading electricity DSOs in 20 countries, including 2 national associations, cooperating to ensure the reliability of Europe’s electricity supply for consumers and enabling their active participation in our energy system.
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DATAMITE at InfoCom World 2024
The 26th InfoCom World Conference was held in Athens on 12 November 2024 under the theme 'Digital Greece: Time to take the leap'. The annual meeting focused on the dynamic development of the country (Greece) through the adoption and use of new technologies, the challenges and opportunities that arise, and the steps that need to be taken by market players to achieve the 'digital leap'!
The thematic sections of the conference covered key topics such as: private networks, artificial intelligence, data centres, e-government, smart cities and digital projects, with an emphasis on the practical application and benefits of new technologies, bringing together key speakers from Greece and abroad. DATAMITE was present at InfoCom 2024 in two ways.
On the one hand, DATAMITE participated in the session 'Unlocking the Power of Data with DATAMITE Project: Innovative Approaches to Data Monetization and Interoperability'. The session featured two members of the consortium as speakers: Jordi Arjona Aroca from ITI and technical coordinator of DATAMITE, and Daniela Fuchs from the Centre for Social Innovation. They were joined by Sotiris Koussouris from Suite5 Data Intelligence Solutions and Haris Mouratidis from the University of Essex. The session was moderated by another member of the DATAMITE consortium, Christos-Antonios Gizelis from OTE Group of Companies.
On the other hand, DATAMITE was represented during the whole day of the event at the OTE booth, where the partners of the consortium communicated and disseminated the project to the attendees through a roll-up.
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