Data has become crucial for success across various sectors, with data spaces emerging as digital environments for trusted data sharing and management. These spaces ensure data sovereignty and have the potential to revolutionise business, economies, and daily life. However, their adoption has been slower than anticipated due to the lack of a standardised technology framework. This framework is essential for integrating key processes common to all data spaces, regardless of region, sector, or use case.
International standardisation is vital for dataspace development as it provides a unified approach to processes, builds confidence for investment, ensures interoperability, enables scalability, fosters trust, increases efficiency, and facilitates global adoption. By establishing common practices and standards, organisations can more readily invest in and implement new solutions, knowing they will be compatible across different systems and regions. The importance of standardisation is evident in everyday technologies, such as mobile phone connectivity in foreign countries, which relies on years of collaborative effort to create and implement standards. Similarly, international standards in data spaces can enable seamless, efficient, and trustworthy data sharing and management across diverse environments, ultimately driving innovation and progress in the data economy.
The IDSA Dataspace protocol comes into play
As underlined in the recent "Making the Dataspace Protocol an international standard” paper published in July 2024, the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) recognized a crucial technological gap and initiated the development of the Dataspace Protocol (DSP).
After seven years of work, they created a protocol that establishes the foundation for trustworthy and sovereign data sharing. The DSP orchestrates the necessary steps for parties to share data, including catalogue requests, contract negotiations, and transfer process management.
The IDSA's ambition was to create a protocol with potential impact comparable to the Internet Protocol (IP) or the GSM standard. Just as IP transformed fragmented networks into a global, interconnected system, and GSM revolutionised mobile telephony worldwide, the DSP aims to bring about a similar paradigm shift in data sharing across industries and sectors.
What exactly is the Dataspace Protocol?
The Dataspace Protocol, set to be released in late summer 2024, is a comprehensive framework designed to enable secure, trustworthy, and interoperable data sharing between entities using web technologies. It provides a standardised approach for organisations to share data while adhering to industry standards and best practices, potentially opening up new data-driven business opportunities.
A more detailed insight of the Protocol can be found here.
Rationales behind the IDSA’s adoption of the Protocol
IDSA's decision to develop the Dataspace Protocol was driven by several important factors:
- A pressing need for a common interoperability foundation in data spaces, which facilitate data sharing under specific human and machine-readable agreements.
- The maturity of concepts ready for standardisation. IDSA views this as a starting point for further developments built on this foundation, not the end goal.
- European legislation, particularly the Data Act, calling for standards. This act, effective from September 2025, will set criteria for data space participants across the EU's 27 countries. It will impact any business operating in this USD ~17 trillion market, the world's third-largest after the US and China, necessitating harmonised interoperability standards to enable data flow within and between data spaces.
Steps of the standardisation process:
The standardisation process can be divided into three key phases:
- First phase: IDSA Working Group Architecture develops and structures the DSP.
- Second phase: Eclipse Dataspace Protocol Specification project, under the Eclipse Dataspace Working Group (EDWG), manages the DSP. This includes creating the Dataspace Technology Compatibility Kit for interoperability and compliance. The DSP is then submitted to ISO/IEC as a Publicly Available Standard (PAS).
- Third phase: Joint Technical Committee (JTC1) standardises and publishes the protocol as an official ISO/IEC standard.
What are the next steps?
The IDSA aims to promote global adoption of data spaces and data sovereignty. With the Dataspace Protocol standardisation progressing, the organisation has outlined key steps for the future. These include finalising the ISO/IEC standardisation process to publish the protocol as an official standard by the end of 2024, which will provide stability for widespread adoption.
The IDSA plans to promote adoption and implementation by collaborating with technology providers, policymakers, and industry leaders. They will prioritise the protocol's adoption in various activities, events, and through their partner ecosystem.
Another crucial step is certifying compliant connector implementations. IDSA will evolve its Certification Scheme to assess interoperability modules through automated testing, ensuring reliable and interoperable connectors for seamless data space participation.
Throughout this process, the IDSA will continue to curate the Dataspace Protocol Specification Document, addressing user feedback and integrating necessary changes into future standard revisions. This approach aims to balance the need for stability in the ISO standard with the flexibility to adapt to user needs and technological advancements in the field of data sharing and sovereignty.