Sovereignty and responsibility in digitalization: competence network data trust models

TU Dresden is involved in the nationwide development of expertise in data trusteeship.

Scientists from TU Dresden are working with partners from Hesse, Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia to establish a competence network for data trust models. The consortium, led by ZEVEDI (TU Darmstadt), was selected for funding as part of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research's (BMBF) call for proposals for "Scaling and increasing the acceptance of intersectoral data trust models in practice". Starting on June 1, 2024, the project will run for 25 months and will be funded by the BMBF with approximately 2 million euros from European Union - NextGenerationEU funds.

The European data policy approach of changing data markets through 'new intermediaries' places high expectations on so-called data trustees. The mandate and promise to the respective data owners is to safeguard data sovereignty – at the same time, they should make it much easier to share data in the future. Data sharing is an area of tension with a multitude of challenges – especially at the interfaces between science, business and civil society: in addition to the neutrality requirement, for example, the legal structure and questions of liability, sponsorship or possible refinancing and business models need to be clarified.

The aim of the BMBF-funded project is to create an umbrella structure which, in addition to building up expertise and pooling competence and networking, will also help to further develop the idea of data trusts in a practical and strategic manner.

"Data trusteeships and the knowledge of data trusteeship are of central importance for excellent, data-intensive research ," says Prof. Dr. Lars Bernard, CDIO of TU Dresden and co-applicant, explaining the importance of the Data Trust Models Competence Network for TU Dresden.

The CIDS at TU Dresden as well as Prof. Dr. Anne Lauber-Rönsberg(Institute of International Law, Intellectual Property and Technology Law) and Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart with TUD|excite are involved in the project.

The BMBF has already announced several funding rounds for the development and implementation of data trust models and is financing numerous projects. TU Dresden is already successfully involved here – for example with the joint project "DDtrust" for the implementation of a data trust model for the Saxon scientific area (2022 to 2024)  and the recently successfully acquired implementation project "DDtrust-scale" (2024 to 2025) for the establishment of a data trust office in the DRESDEN-concept network.

Further information on the project

Press release ZEVEDI

https://zevedi.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ZEVEDI_PM_K-Netz_DTM_20240521.pdf

Contact Prof. Lars Bernard

Prof. Lars Bernard (CDIO, TU Dresden)

© European Commission