- Specification of GAIA-X Federation Services by April 2021
- Open-source approach for 5 work packages
- BMWi funding the project with around 13.5 million Euro
In cooperation with partners, eco – Association of the Internet Industry will specify the GAIA-X Federation Services. To this end, eco has set up a Project Management Office (PMO) and defined five work packages. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) is funding the project with around 13.5 million Euro. “With the start of the project, we have laid the foundation for delivering on the performance promise of GAIA-X,” says Andreas Weiss, Head of Digital Business Models at the eco Association. “GAIA-X is a federative concept. This creates a space for self-determination that we in Germany and Europe value very highly.” In this sense, the federation services within the GAIA-X ecosystem will also be created as open source. On this basis, user groups can also organise themselves as part of GAIA-X, provided they conform to the relevant rules.
Uniform data and service space based on jointly agreed rules
The five GAIA-X core services – Identity & Trust, Federated Catalogue, Sovereign Data Exchange, Compliance and Federation Services Integration & Portal – are at the centre of the first specification round which runs until Spring 2021. The five work packages are primarily concerned with supporting further development and ensuring the interoperability of all subsections. The project will start with a requirements specification phase with the aim of launching the tendering process for the individual subsections in April.
The envisaged GAIA-X framework aims to link implemented data ecosystems and infrastructure ecosystems. The result is a federated and interoperable overall ecosystem. Participants can use data and services sovereignly across sector-specific data spaces. All data and service offers are transparent and the dependencies on individual providers, so-called lock-in effects, are reduced.
Innovative ecosystem for data and services
“The current Covid-19 situation shows that stable and resilient digital infrastructures and services are of great importance,” says Andreas Weiss. For providers in the infrastructure ecosystem, standardised networking offers new opportunities to bring innovative and customised offerings to the market. For example, they can link their services, develop, expand and scale them together.
The goal of GAIA-X is the conception of a federated data infrastructure with a focus on data sovereignty and data availability, based on European standards and values, with the aim of promoting innovation in Europe. In a very short period of time, more than 300 companies and organisations with over 500 people have already actively contributed to the GAIA-X initiative. Of these, 75 percent are in the private sector, half of which are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
