Data spaces are the key to achieving sovereign, interoperable and trustworthy data sharing and the central element of a thriving data economy. To drive the adoption of data spaces across Europe and beyond, the Big Data Value Association (BDVA), FIWARE Foundation, Gaia-X, and the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) formed the Data Spaces Business Alliance (DSBA) in September 2021. The DSBA now published the ‘Technical Convergence Discussion Document’.
The discussion document is an agile paper that defines a common reference technology framework. This framework is based on the technical convergence of existing architectures and models and leverages mutual infrastructure and implementation efforts. The goal is to achieve interoperability and portability of solutions across data spaces by harmonizing technological components.
To achieve technical convergence, a Minimum Viable Framework (MVF) will be developed to enable the creation of data spaces. An initial version of the MVF will include a minimum set of building blocks necessary to cover the three key technology pillars for creating data spaces: data interoperability, data sovereignty and trust, and data value creation.
The paper discusses the trust anchor framework for data spaces, shared catalogues and marketplaces and a policy definition language. To better visualize and understand the details of the descriptions in paper, the DSBA defined a highly detailed example use case with technical descriptions that can be generalized to other use cases. The use case implements a scenario where a data service provider offers a service on a public marketplace, so that service consuming parties can acquire access to this offering.
The ‘Technical Convergence Discussion Document’ is an agile paper that will continuously be updated. The current version is available here.
