This content was created by the Data Sharing Coalition, one of the founding partners of the CoE-DSC.
Please note: On April 30th 2021, the Data Sharing Coalition published the final version (1.0) of the Harmonisation Canvas, which was renamed the ‘Data Sharing Canvas’. Read the news article here.
Data sharing across domains and sectors allows organisations to unlock the true economic and societal value of their data, but the interoperability between domains and sectors that is required to enable data sharing across domains and sectors is still lacking. The Data Sharing Coalition has made an important practical step towards this goal with the release of the first version of the Harmonisation Canvas, a document which bundles insights and knowledge on how to realise seamless cross-sectoral data sharing at scale.
Download the Data Sharing Canvas
Enabling scalable data sharing within and across domains and sectors
The amount of data that is generated on a daily basis is growing exponentially with the world’s collective sum of data expected to reach 175 trillion gigabytes in 2025. Data has the unique characteristic of being an easily shareable and re-usable asset; one dataset can support an unlimited amount of applications at the same time. That is why the true value of data can only be realised when it is shared and re-used within and across domains. By doing so, organisations can create additional economic and societal value with this vast pool of data. Initiatives that enable data sharing already exist within several domains, but these existing data sharing initiatives rarely account for data sharing across domains.
Data sharing across domains and sectors allows organisations to create more value with their data as it enables a multitude of new data sharing use cases. That is why the Data Sharing Coalition aims to drive data sharing across domains under control of the entitled party by enabling interoperability between data sharing domains and strengthening existing initiatives in data sharing domains.
With a diverse set of experts, we explore and document generic agreements for data sharing that, once implemented, enable data sharing at scale within and across domains and sectors. The foundation for these agreements is laid in the Harmonisation Canvas; a document which bundles the insights and knowledge from a collaborative effort by experts in the Data Sharing Coalition.
Providing valuable insights about data sharing through collaborative efforts
The Harmonisation Canvas contains a wide range of valuable and practical insights for organisations looking to drive data sharing within and outside their domain. These valuable insights include best practices for relevant topics in data sharing (e.g. identification, authentication, and authorisation), preliminary insights into what is needed to share data across domains, and a glimpse into what is needed to achieve interoperability between existing and future data sharing initiatives.
The Harmonisation Canvas is developed through a collaborative effort by Data Sharing Coalition participants. 21 experts from 15 different organisations have contributed to the first version of the Harmonisation Canvas. In addition to the contributions made by experts, real-life cross-domain data sharing use cases and analyses of existing data sharing initiatives provide essential insights into what is needed to develop generic agreements for data sharing and to facilitate interoperability between existing initiatives. Throughout the development process of the Harmonisation Canvas, industry best practices will be collected and documented to strengthen existing data sharing initiatives and guide development of new data sharing initiatives.
Next steps: collaborating towards a final version of the Harmonisation Canvas
The Data Sharing Coalition will continue with its collaborative effort towards further development of the Harmonisation Canvas; insights about relevant data sharing topics will be gathered from experts, the real-life cross-domain data sharing use cases of the Data Sharing Coalition, and additional in-depth analyses of existing data sharing initiatives. The final version of the Harmonisation Canvas will be released in Q2 2021, after which the insights of the Harmonisation Canvas will be used to develop generic agreements that will enable data sharing at scale within and across domains and sectors. This will enable many new data sharing use cases and allow organisations to unlock the true value of their data.
The most recent version of the Data Sharing Canvas can be downloaded below.
Download the Data Sharing Canvas
