Progress Archives - TRUSTS

Workshop: IPR & State-of-the-art Data Stewardship

Hannah Engel — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 08:56:11 +0000

With increasing digitisation, data itself is becoming a product. This necessarily brings the question of the rights of disposal over this data (Intellectual Property Rights, IPR) into focus: Who owns the data? Who is allowed to use the data, how, and for how long? In order to determine the value of data and then subsequently preserve it, data must be sufficiently documented, comprehensibly managed and archived. In this context, a functional role in dealing with data as well as data management has emerged: the “(Business) Data Steward”. But what is the role of a data steward in creating value from data and commercialisation? And how can a (business) data steward help to create value from data as a product?

To get to the bottom of all these questions, the Data Intelligence Offensive (DIO) in cooperation with the EU Horizon 2020 project TRUSTS – Trusted Secure Data Sharing Space organised two hands-on online workshops on 1 June 2021. The workshops were introduced with short inputs on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in data sharing as well as data stewardship and commercialisation of data. Brainstorming sessions allowed participants to discuss their own experiences and expectations.

Intellectual property rights (IPR) in data exchange

Norbert Amlacher, head of the DIO working group Data and Law, opened with a short presentation on IPR in data exchange. Among other things, he spoke about who has access to data and how. Is this the owner of the sensor (owner of a production machine or a car, etc.) or the manufacturer of the sensor (as currently still in the example of sensors in vehicles)?

Austrian property law does not provide much information. Especially because it lacks a pure definition of the term data. Moreover, Austrian property law distinguishes between ownership and possession, which is why Mr. Amlacher explained: “According to prevailing opinion, you can only get ownership of physical things. That means if you say data is not a physical thing, then I can’t have data ownership.” Nevertheless, data trade is possible because the allocation of specific powers can be regulated by contract.

Data Stewardship and Commercialisation of Data

In the second workshop, Dipl.-Ing. Axel Quitt, DIO Data Steward, explained that the way data is used has a significant impact on the role of the data steward. In the beginning, data were considered process results that were administered. But over time, the use and therefore the value creation of data changed: from data as a process enabler to data as a product enabler to data as a product. According to Axel Quitt, the key question is: “Where are the tasks summarised that organisationally ensure that the data can be used in the respective constructs of the data economy in the appropriate quality, at the right time and with the appropriately correctly assigned value creation? This is a field that is unoccupied. That can be the role of the data steward, but it can also develop in a completely different way.”

Brainstorming sessions: the desire for guidlines

After the short inputs, the participants were divided into brainstorming sessions where they shared their experiences or the organisation’s handling of intellectual property and gave suggestions on levels of protection and pragmatic solutions.

What emerged was the complexity of dealing with IPR and the desire for guidelines to make it easier. Participants agreed that these need to be uniformly regulated and communicated at EU level, as data is worked with across borders. The difficulty for organisations/institutions with regard to IPR arises from the fact that data collection is the actual effort. IPR rules and clearly defined terms are needed here: Data Sharing Agreements, Data Ownership, etc. The participants agreed that in the long term, IPR protection can only be achieved with data certificates.

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TRUSTS: Europe’s long road to competitive data trade

Hannah Engel — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 10:00:19 +0000

Progress in data exchange through EU initiative TRUSTS

Vienna/Hanover – 25 February 2021 – Europe can not keep up with the international competition on data and digitalisation – not yet. The number of initiatives that want to provide assistance in this area is constantly increasing. One of them is the EU project TRUSTS, which is working on practicable solutions to problems of commercial data exchange and explicitly focuses on ensuring that ethical and legal values are upheld.

Data markets are not really different from traditional markets. A data market is a (virtual) place where data is made available and interested parties can purchase it. The problem: Similar to the local weekly market where the trusted farmer’s wife only offers one type of apple, data markets are limited in the selection of data available. Conversely, a limited number of data also means a limited number of interested parties. The EU project TRUSTS aims to break up this microcosm and optimise commercial data exchange. The goal is to build a TRUSTS platform that also acts as a so-called “data market federator” and thus integrates existing and future data markets into the TRUSTS platform. In this case, the data to be traded will remain with the owner. An interoperability component is being developed in TRUSTS for this purpose, with the help of which other data markets can be connected to TRUSTS. The platform acts as a collected marketplace where data can be brought together and queried across sectors. In this way, the offer is expanded many times over for both providers and interested parties.

Secure data sharing through the linking of data markets

In order to create a common data marketplace, different data markets must be linked with each other. Through this linkage, interested parties have the opportunity to access the data relevant to them from an extensive data pool via a single point of contact (TRUSTS platform Federator).

For this, TRUSTS draws on experience from the Data Market Austria (DMA) project and the already existing reference architecture of the International Data Spaces Association (ISDA) and its formal standards. The reference architecture defines key concepts and requirements for data exchange. The technical further development of the IDS architecture should make it possible to connect participants with each other, exchange queries and transfer data. In this way, data sharing is to be taken a step further towards competitiveness at the European level.

Data and applications for data processing and analysis are made available via a so-called “Trusted Connector”. The focus is on secure data exchange and the trustworthy interaction of the participants in the system. Security can be achieved, for example, through restricted access to network interfaces and through the certification of applications and services. As a rule, data is centralised via a provider. However, via the “connector” already mentioned, data can be offered or acquired in a decentralised manner – regardless of where the data actually reside.

Hurdles to overcome

In addition to legal and ethical framework conditions, there are still a number of open questions, especially at the technical level. For example, the standardisation of data or the interfaces needed to connect all data markets to one marketplace. In order to be able to gather empirical values here, in a first step, solution approaches for the joint use, trade and (re-)use of data and services are being tested in three different use cases in the areas of finance (anti-money laundering compliance), marketing (agile marketing through data correlation) and customer support (improvement of customer support through data collection).

In order to be able to keep up internationally, a uniform EU data strategy and, associated with this, the ability to ensure data sharing in a uniform manner is of great importance. The first positive projects and initiatives have already been launched by Data Market Austria and IDSA. TRUSTS aims to take these projects further and implement them sustainably. TRUSTS also wants to link up with other projects to create a macro-structural solution.

Additional information on interoperability can be found in the deliverable D3.4 Data Marketplaces with Interoperability Solutions I.

You can also find more information on interoperability and data markets in the TRUSTS podcast with Stefan Gindl, task leader within the framework of TRUSTS (german only):

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Survey: which data market do you need?

Hannah Engel — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 20:43:59 +0000

Data markets come in many shapes and with various functionalities. We need to know what you see as important so we can build a data marketplace that fulfils your needs. Tell us what you think in our survey! Its aim is to capture requirements from industrial data providers/users, academia, as well as from regulatory stakeholders.

The current European data market is not functioning optimally. An estimated 90% of the data collected by companies is not used. Companies can innovate a lot, improve processes, offer better products and services, and learn about the market on which they operate, when they use and share collected data. Data markets can be the solution. However, data markets come in many shapes and with various functionalities. We are interested to know what functionalities and benefits you see as important. This information will help TRUSTS to build the data marketplace that fulfils your needs and creates business value.

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