Discussion Paper
The concept of the data space is a corner stone of Europe’s Data Strategy. It expresses the ambition of creating the ‘Common European Data Spaces’. The data space approach provides a scalable mechanism for sovereign, trusted and interoperable exchange of data between many participants and stakeholders. The data space landscape as it is today consists of both the emerging European sectoral data spaces (as part of the ‘Common European Data Spaces’ approach) and a multitude of smaller-scale data spaces.
However, since data sharing use cases and business models are very often not bound to specific communities of participants, it is quite likely that hardly any single formalized data space will cover all the data sharing needs of its participants. Moreover, emerging data sharing application areas such as Digital Product Passports (DPPs), Digital Twins (DTs), Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) may need data services provided by parties that are not part of the pre-defined community of participants of specific data spaces.
Building upon the assumption that hardly any single data space will cover all the needs of its participants, a growing need is emerging for establishing dynamic data sharing relationships between participants (data service providers and consumers) in different data sharing communities. Therefore, to cater for this need for dynamic data sharing relationships a paradigm shift is needed.
It is expected that the recently developed Dataspace Protocol (DSP), will provide the essential legal and technical capabilities to support dynamic establishment of trusted data sharing relationships. As such, the DSP may be the game-changer for the paradigm shift from ‘data space in isolation’ towards ‘dynamic trusted data sharing’. It can provide the foundation for a ‘participation-driven’ business model approach to data sharing, allowing for large-scale interoperability and federation through a ‘Common Carrier Layer’.
Introduction of participation-driven approach
This discussion paper introduces the participation-driven approach to data sharing as a scalable approach towards the establishment of dynamic data sharing relationships between participants operating in different data spaces or data sharing initiatives. Moreover, it also supports participation of organizations that are not a member of a data space or data sharing community yet. It is based on a Common Carrier Layer.
In its dynamic nature, the participation-driven approach minimizes the need for supporting centralized intermediary services but rather relies on interoperability functions for discoverability, data sovereignty and trust that are provided in a fully-decentralized manner, connecting individual data sharing participants into an ecosystem of data sharing participants, irrespective of the boundaries of specific data sharing communities. They are enabled by the DSP, which can be deployed to guarantee both legal validity / bindingness of data sharing transactions and technical interoperability between data sharing participants across data spaces.
The goals of this paper
The goals of this discussion paper are to create awareness of the potential of a participation-driven approach and its importance in support large-scale interoperability and federation between participants across data sharing communities, explain and elaborate the concepts of the participation-driven approach and the Common Carrier Layer, their business rationale and legal and technical grounding, and to provide input for further discussion and exploration of the potential business, development and deployment impacts of the participation-driven approach and the Common Carrier Layer for creating more dynamic data sharing relationships as basis for large scale interoperability and federation.
Moreover, this discussion paper does a call for action for further elaboration and validation of the business, legal and technical grounding of the participation-driven approach based on the Common Carrier Layer, with a goal for its embedding within the development of both the EU Data Strategy and data space developments.
