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DATAMITE and the development of common EU data spaces

In an increasingly digital world, more and more data are being generated, making it an increasingly essential asset for both social and economic benefit. “The smart use of data can have a transformative effect on all sectors of the economy and can create new opportunities for economic growth, including for small and medium-sized enterprises”, states the European Commission in the Building a data economy - Brochure. This is why the European Commission has established the European data strategy. A roadmap to make the EU leader in this new data-driven society, creating a single market for data to pool European data in key sectors, with common and interoperable data spaces. One of DATAMITE's objectives is to support the deployment of these Common European Data Spaces, thanks to its relevant partners in the International Data Spaces (IDS) ecosystem.

The Importance of common European data spaces

As said before, practically every scenario of today's life produces data. This makes it important to create infrastructures where data generated by individuals, companies or public organisations can be collected and shared easily, securely and ensuring the quality of the processed data. According to the Staff working document on data spaces, the Common European data spaces aim to:

• Deploy data-sharing tools and services for the pooling, processing and sharing of data by an open number of organisations.
• Include data governance structures, compatible with relevant EU legislation, which determine, in a transparent and fair way, the rights concerning access to and processing of the data.
• Improve the availability, quality and interoperability of data – both in domain-specific settings and across sectors.

DATAMITE, an ally for the implementation of common European data spaces

DATAMITE is part of the Horizon Europe programme efforts to support research and innovation in new technologies underpinning the data economy. Not surprisingly, its main objective is to provide a modular, open source, multi-domain framework for improved monetisation, interoperability, commerce, and data exchange.

To be able to reach this goal, DATAMITE addresses the challenge of the lack of trusted and secure platforms for data sharing. It aims to establish trust in data sharing by leveraging the experience of initiatives like IDS and Gaia-X. To ensure that the project results are adapted to possible new tools or technologies that may appear throughout the life of DATAMITE, the consortium includes several partners, such as IDSA, Fraunhofer and TECNALIA, that ensure awareness of the initiatives evolution and collaborate with them.

Use Cases to prove data sharing in data spaces

DATAMITE proposes three different Use Cases with two pilot scenarios each. These Use Cases focus on data exchange within large corporations, energy data spaces, and interaction with other initiatives. Each use case leverages various components of DATAMITE to improve data governance, quality, and security.

After testing DATAMITE in these six pilots, the project aims to enhance data sharing through its modules, focusing on governance, quality, security, and data sovereignty. It provides tools for interoperability and facilitates data sharing in data spaces. Additionally, DATAMITE offers a technological stack to ease data management and sharing, particularly in data spaces, contributing to improving the interoperability of data providers.

“The creation of EU-wide common, interoperable data spaces will overcome existing legal and technical barriers to data sharing and, as such, unleash the enormous potential of data-driven innovation”, affirms the European Commission. DATAMITE not only agrees but a large part of the workload of the project is aimed at facilitating the exchange of data between users. And, therefore, to contribute to the long-awaited creation of common European Data Spaces that provide new and better data-driven business models, positioning the European economy as a leader in the sector.

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Happy “back to school"!

By Santiago Cáceres Elvira

Happy “back to school"! The new school year sometimes means new faces, and so it is with DATAMITE. I am Santiago Cáceres, project manager from ITI in Spain, and it is truly an honour to coordinate such an exciting project as DATAMITE, with its fantastic team comprising 26 different organisations from 11 countries.

 The Consortium has been working on DATAMITE for over nine months, and I must point out that its objectives are even more relevant than when defined over two years ago at proposal time.

While organisations are aware of the enormous potential of data and its value, it is hard for them to extract it for several reasons (lack of resources, technological skills, and sharing culture, among others). Figures are precise: around 65% of data is never used for analysis, and 95% of organisations suffer from the data decision gap.

DATAMITE aims to directly impact those figures by providing its modular open-source platform and training material, paving the way to a more data-driven industry and economy.

Let me finish this short introduction by letting you know that we will be sponsoring the European Big Data Value Forum 2023, to be held in the beautiful city of Valencia. I invite you to join our “Empowering Data Spaces through New European Research Projects / Data Economy through Emerging Technologies: AI, Data Trading, and Interoperability” session on Thursday, 26th October, and visit our booth to learn more about our developments.

The hard work continues! Thank you for joining us and enjoy reading our newsletter!

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Use Case: Connecting eDWIN to data markets

In the agri-food domain, food safety and quality are essential. Digital revolution provided a lot of opportunities for monitoring and optimising the processes in the whole food production chain. The innovative services, more and more AI- based, require high quality of data but also a wide range of the trusted data sources from different providers. Not surprisingly, one of the main objectives of the European Commission's digital agenda is to establish common data spaces where a multitude of public and private companies in the same sector can store and share quality data to drive both an improvement in the quality of life and in the European economy.

One of DATAMITE's objectives is to support the deployment of these common European data spaces through its innovative modular, open-source and multi-domain Framework to improve data monetising, interoperability, trading and exchange.

Connecting eDWIN to data markets Use Case: a unique opportunity to test the DATAMITE framework

To be able to measure the value offered by the DATAMITE framework it is ideal to be tested over an actual use case where, despite the large amount of data already in operation, it is evident that secure data exchange between public institutions and the commercial sector needs to be enabled to enhance data monetisation. eDWIN, a national platform for farming guidance in Poland, operated by WODR and PSNC, fulfils all the necessary requirements to be one of the Use Cases of the project.

eDWIN is a crucial element of the country's sustainable agriculture strategy, supporting mostly farmers and advisors. In addition to data contributed by farmers -such as food origin produced in a given farm- it integrates information from meteorological ground stations providing agro-meteo data and statistical information, a Farm Management System, and ground-based observations of disease and pest occurrence.  However, eDWIN's reliance on public institution data and services limits its offerings to farmers, as many essential services come from the commercial sector.

The current roadmap for eDWIN emphasises the need to enable secure data sharing to potentiate data monetisation, ensuring interoperability and quality of data for comparison and validation, data fusion and data reliability for use in decision support services. An ideal scenario to test DATAMITE's governance, quality and exchange modules and to position eDWIN at the forefront of the agri-food sector by offering the highest quantity and quality of data to its users.

The DATAMITE framework: a key piece for connecting public and private data services

The scope of the pilot is to utilise the DATAMITE framework to overcome the challenges faced by eDWIN in relation to the lack of available data as it relies mostly on data provided by users and different public services. The DATAMITE framework should provide several key mechanisms necessary for the implementation of an AgriDataMarketPlace pilot integrated with eDWIN so it can be exploited by all its customers, and by companies building services on top of it. 

DATAMITE governance and quality modules should help to improve data management, and quality standards and validation of the acquired data. The sharing module should also provide mechanisms to smoothly publish data into the Marketplace in a secure way as well as keeping control over the data through its data sovereignty component, enabling the definition of sharing policies. It should also provide accounting mechanisms to facilitate data trading and billing.

Impacts beyond the use-case scenario

The developed pilot is an example of public-private partnership, where the data coming primarily from the public institutions can be reused to provide better services for farmers and to generate more revenue in the commercial sector, in particular SMEs that are more open for data sharing.

The outcome of the pilot will help build the Data Space in Agriculture in Poland, enabling more easy collaboration for the whole ecosystem. Pilot outcomes can also be applied in other regions in Europe, thus contributing to the common European data space for agriculture announced and under development by the European Commission.

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Use Case: Corporate Multi-Site Data Exchange

The constant increase in data today makes it impossible for companies - regardless of size - to ignore the enormous potential of data monetisation to increase profits and even expand their markets. Data monetization is the process where company-generated data is used to create a measurable economic benefit, explains Talend.

While it is most common when one hears about data monetisation to imagine companies selling the data they generate to third parties, there is also great potential for data monetisation in the internal use of data to improve services already provided or to create new ones. However, when the company that wants to use its internal data is a large company with numerous subsidiaries, data monetisation faces a major obstacle: the complexity behind multi-site data exchange.

OTE Multi-Site Data Exchange Use Case: a unique opportunity to test the DATAMITE framework

To be able to measure the value offered by the DATAMITE framework it is ideal to be tested over an actual use case that combines data from different data platforms and systems and has real business value for the organisation. OTE, the largest mobile network operator in Greece, fulfils all the necessary requirements to be one of the Use Cases of the project.

Currently OTE subsidiaries have their own data repositories that mainly ingest, store, process and analyse their own datasets. When a subsidiary needs information that is not part of its own business, a data exchange process is initiated to request data based on business need. Overall data exchange process is lengthy, complex and resource demanding, resulting in data and process duplication, increased delivery times, and development and operational efforts. 

The DATAMITE framework: a key piece for exchanging data between different data lakes within the same company

The scope of the pilot is to utilise the DATAMITE framework to overcome the challenges that OTE faces concerning intra-corporate data exchange between different subsidiaries of OTE Group of companies, allowing building a convergent customer view and building on top of this reporting and analytics solutions.

DATAMITE framework will produce an efficient data exchange process, by creating a metadata repository reducing complexity of governing data, allowing users to have uniform, fine grain and rule based security controls, as well as, providing a global point to define quality rules. Moreover, during the pilot, the Data Governance module of DATAMITE will enable business and technical users to have a common understanding of business terms across different data sources. 

The Data Quality module will also allow users to feel confident to use available datasets, knowing that required quality and freshness rules have been implemented and the data to be used meet the needed standards, while, Access, Security and Data Sharing modules will ensure that data will be shared across data platforms in a secure and reliable way having a common data model, where mandatory regulations (GDPR) and organisation policies (including privacy and security) have been implemented across platforms and data accessed based on a centralised approach.

One of the main challenges of the use case is to combine information from numerous data sources to calculate needed datasets and features that will be used in the analysis phase of the project.

Impacts beyond the use-case scenario

The developed pilot could be leveraged by the organisation to expand it in the full scale of the use case (using all needed data sources), utilised in other use cases with similar data needs and support execution of ad-hoc analysis and visualisations allowing the organisation to perform self-service reporting and analytics. 

Pilot setup can also be exploited in other similar organisations (either in telecom industry or other industries with similar data needs) reducing time to deliver and expand data democratisation.

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How DATAMITE will contribute to unlock the potential of data

In an increasingly data-driven world, organisations are realising the immense potential of data monetization. By harnessing the power of data, businesses can gain valuable insights, make informed decisions, and even create new revenue streams. According to Gartner Glossary, data monetization, refers to the process of using data to obtain quantifiable economic benefit data by transforming it into actionable insights, products, or services.

With the EU's strong emphasis on data protection, privacy and trust in voluntary data sharing through regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the Data Governance Act (DGA), the data landscape has undergone significant transformations. However, as organisations adapt to these regulations, they are also discovering innovative ways to unlock the potential of their data assets.

DATAMITE is designed to revolutionise the European data market by helping users who want to better monetise their data and become the leading edge of the data monetisation.

Trends and Opportunities in the EU

Compliance and Ethical Considerations

The GDPR has played a crucial role in shaping data monetization practices in the EU. It has created a foundation for data protection and privacy, ensuring that data is collected, processed, and shared responsibly.

In this context, DATAMITE is one step ahead and its multidisciplinary team includes two companies in charge of this trend. The Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI) ensures that the whole process of developing the framework is carried out with a high focus on Social Sciences and Humanities that goes beyond the monetary aspects. Law and Internet foundation (LIF), on the other hand, ensures that all activities developed within the project are legally and ethically aligned with the European regulatory framework and principles. 

Collaborative Data Partnerships

As data becomes increasingly valuable, organisations are seeking partnerships to pool their resources and create more comprehensive datasets. Anytime two companies combine their data-driven insights to create new value, we are seeing data collaboration in action. Despite the enormous value of creating a partnership, companies or public bodies should always bear in mind the above point about data privacy. “In the modern world where privacy and security are of monumental importance, the methods companies use to collaborate around data are more important than ever”, reminds the Data Collaboration Guide.

The DATAMITE project as a whole is a good example of the benefits of collaborative data partnerships, with more than 20 organisations participating in its development, sharing knowledge on data storage, security and exchange. And, in particular, its use cases seek to realise the full potential of multi-site data exchange and data exchange between service providers and dataspaces.

Improving data quality; a must for data monetisation

To derive meaningful insights, data must be of high quality, accurate, and reliable. According to the publication Data.europa.eu data quality guidelines, poor quality data is a major barrier to data reuse. This is not new, since 2021 the Open Data Maturity assessment showed that, out of all the parameters it takes into account, EU countries scored lowest on Quality. Yet there is still much room for improvement in this field.

DATAMITE recognizes the critical role of data quality in successful data monetization, and is fully committed to improving it. As Liliana Beltrán, Specialist in positioning and Data innovation ecosystems at ITI - Instituto Tecnológico de Informática, on behalf of the project said at the Data Week 2023: “We firmly believe that to embark on a new era of the data economy, it is crucial to prioritise efforts in enhancing data quality. High-quality data is a fundamental aspect of successful data monetization”. By prioritizing efforts to enhance data quality, the project aims to overcome the barriers posed by poor data quality and promote the reuse of data.

DATAMITE: Empowering European Companies in Data Monetization

In the context of this evolving landscape, the DATAMITE project emerges as a game-changer, empowering European companies to improve data monetization, interoperability, trading, and exchange at both internal and external levels.

To support internal improvement, DATAMITE provides users a collection of open-source modules to enhance their data quality and trustworthiness, as well as Tech training material to upskill personnel. But also, from a data economic perspective, DATAMITE provides EU companies strategies to improve data monetization and mechanisms to quantify the value of their data.

At an external level, DATAMITE ensures that users retain control over their data, enabling them to explore new sources of revenue and foster interactions through Data Sharing and Sovereignty Mechanisms.

In summary, by adhering to FAIR principles and providing data owners with tools to secure and reliably share quality data, DATAMITE boosts data economy. Through this initiative, European organisations can harness the power of their data assets, drive innovation, and explore new sources of revenue in the evolving data economy.

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