Implementing and using digital technologies is critical for creating economic growth – especially in times of economic crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, where it is important to keep people and organizations connected. To create the preconditions for establishing a digital economy, World Bank’s „Digital Development“ team collaborates with national governments around the globe. One central aspect in this endeavor is to make sure people and organizations have affordable access to high-speed internet, another is to implement digital solutions that are based on network security and data privacy.
With regard to such crucial aspects, the World Bank team in its consultations with the Turkish government referred to IDS as a best practice. As a result, IDSA experts – together with representatives from the European Commission, the Big Data Value Association (BDVA,) and the Gaia-X initiative – were given the opportunity to present the idea and potential of international data spaces to decision-makers from Turkey in various workshops and other interactive formats. Among the participants were representatives of the Turkish Ministry of Science, Industry, and Technology, members of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, and researchers from various universities.
Manufacturing industry plays a key role in Turkey
The Turkish manufacturing industry plays an important role in the overall well-being of the country, accounting for 19 percent of the Turkish GDP in 2018 (the goal is to increase this share to 21 percent by 2023). As in any other industrialized country, the manufacturing industry in Turkey is currently subject to fundamental data-driven transformation, as operational processes are producing more and more data of different types that need to be stored, managed, analyzed, and used.
In view of this situation, the Turkish government has come to the conclusion that an industrial cloud platform needs to be established, allowing companies, public authorities, and other organizations to join forces in order to be able to collectively master exponentially growing data volumes and make data manageable and usable for the benefit of all parties involved.
The IDS standard can pave the way toward data-driven business models that are innovative, user-friendly, and sustainable. The idea of the Turkish government is now to take up the topic of data sovereignty and transfer the IDS standard to the industry with the help of use cases and research projects.
