Day on Data Sovereignty, Transparency, Accountability and Persistence

25 March 2026
TU Wien

Trust Day Preparation Committee

Andreas Rauber, Sven Bingert, Paolo Budroni, Stefan Hanslik, Amedeo Staiano, Marie Czuray and Peter Wittenburg

The first day of the FDO Conference will be devoted to trust issues and trustworthiness which can best be described by keywords such as data Sovereignty, Transparency, Traceability, Accountability and Persistence. Much data will be “open” but nevertheless the conditions and processes for data accessibility, reuse and availability need to be clearly formulated. There will be still data [But there will also be much data] that will be associated with restricted availability [restrictions] and thus [needs to be] protected against unauthorised use. Therefore, we will need technology that can implement the above-mentioned dimensions. 

Data and data spaces. Dataspace architectures are currently being developed and implemented in several countries inspired originally by the IDSA Architecture [1] to control reuse. These architectures typically consist of 3 layers: (1) Trust building between partners by agreeing on contracts and semantics, (2) Comparison of formal conditions for reuse defined by the provider and credentials and intentions of reuse by the consumer, (3) In case of a positive negotiation phase a controlled access to data.

An anachronism which we still are faced with and which creates so many problems in our distributed data world is that we are still used to think in terms of “files” where the bit-sequence to be exchanged exists separately from the different metadata describing its properties and even different metadata types (descriptive, deep scientific, provenance, rights, etc.) are often managed by different software systems. The consequence is often that when granting access to data, or copying or distributing data important elements are missing. Instead, it is time to think of “data objects” which bundle all this information in a secure and persistent way, identified by   persistent identifiers. When bundling all information in a machine actionable manner we speak about FAIR Digital Objects [5].

FDOS and Dataspaces. We see the combination of FDOs and Dataspace technologies as implemented for example in the FDO One project [6] as the way forward to implement the future data domain where societies and industries can build on, since both together implement the principles of data Sovereignty, Transparency, Traceability, Accountability and Persistence.

The first day of the conference therefore has four sessions:

1. Welcome messages and directions, Keynote on trust related challenges and developments in industry, Keynote on security aspects.
2. Presentation of different views on requirements for a trustworthy framework
3. Characterisation of the different architectural dataspace approaches and the possible role of FDOs to implement STAP related challenges.
4. Discussing/presenting [Wien] “Vienna Recommendations for future actions”

Session Description

Session 1 – Welcome addresses and directions

TU Wien and AT Ministry will be officially involved. We will have two excellent keynote speakers- last discussions are going on. Of course, we are in close interaction with the AT ministry about the opening.

Session 2 – Trust Framework (STTAP)

The purpose of this session is to listen to the different views about the requirements for building a trust framework that would satisfy the eminent needs of different countries, regions and sectors. The topic is well-known, and the industry is working on solutions to implement their dataspace approaches. But we also realise differences in the views which are based on different cultural and law system views. By having so many excellent experts around it is important to take the opportunity to discuss these views and summarise the essentials.

Session 3 – Implementations of Trust Dimensions (“STTAP”)

The purpose of this session is to discuss the pillars for implementing these trust dimensions which, in our view, are the different dataspace approaches ongoing and FDOs and how they fit together. In different regions/countries different approaches have been defined and there are activities to standardise the three layers all approaches implement in some form: establishing trust based on formal contracts, negotiating rights assertions defined by the producer and credentials and claims by the consumer and when all has been settled the controlled exchange of data. This is a huge challenge, and we feel that FDOs are ideal to act as basic building blocks in these developments. This meeting is an excellent opportunity to discuss and summarise the essentials of all developments and identify commonalities, differences and how to overcome them based on what we heard about the requirements for a trust framework.

Session 4 – Possibility of Wien Recommendation /“Vienna Recommendations for future actions”

The purpose of this session is to evaluate the possibility of joint actions to come to testbeds and bridge building efforts where necessary. A “Wien recommendation”/ “Vienna Recommendations for future actions” for actions that pushes dataspace developments and interoperability using FDOs as basic building blocks would be an outcome with signal effect.

Part a: 

Summary of all impressions, Stefan Hanslik, E-IRG Chair, Head of Unit BMFWW, Technical Science.

Part b: 

We suggest organising a panel with some of the experts whom we asked to participate in the day. Since our major point was to include experts from different regions, the program is heavily loaded. Only at the end we want to reserve sufficient time for discussions about all topics.

It should be mentioned that on the third day of the conference 27 March we will organise a panel on data trust as summarised by data Sovereignty, Transparency, Traceability, Accountability and Persistence. Selected experts will be invited to present statements as discussed on day 1 with active involvement of the audience.

References: 

1. IDSA Architecture: https://internationaldataspaces.org/offers/reference-architecture/ 
2. IDSA Architecture WG: https://internationaldataspaces.org/events/2nd-meeting-of-the-working-group-architecture-2024-2/ 
3. Factory X Project: https://factory-x.org/ 
4. Ouranos Project: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/mono_info_service/connected_industries/ouranos.html 
5. FAIR Digital Objects: https://fairdo.org/ [6] FDO One Project: https://fdo-one.org/