As a University of Excellence, TU Dresden has one of the highest levels of third-party funding in Germany. Data is one of the main pillars of collaborative research and development with partners from industry, business and research institutions. TUD both makes use of this data for analysis in research projects, and also supplies data to other institutions for information or research purposes. In both these cases, the partners could be other researchers, companies, administrative bodies or members of the public.

Often, personal data or other sensitive data (such as intellectual property) is the topic of the exchange. With this in mind, this project aims to plan, test and establish a Data Trust Office for TUD and the wider scientific and economic region of Saxony. We can draw on the work and experiences of other well-established offices to help us consolidate our projects, such as the Data Trust Office of the Faculty of Medicine, the Service Center Research Data and Unit 3.5 Information Security at TUD. The Chief Officer Digitalization and Information of TU Dresden, Prof. Lars Bernard, is coordinating this project.

The neutral and independent Data Trust Office will ensure that the regulations on personal rights and copyright are complied with both for TUD data and for data provided for use by third parties (e.g. for analyses by the scientific community). The office is also intended to be part of a nationwide system of Data Trust Offices, as recommended by the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII) and outlined in the federal government's current Data Strategy.

Implementation

The project has three central focal points:

• The development and implementation of a master plan (incl. a sustainable operating model) for a Data Trust Office for research data of various origins and the establishment of corresponding processes for data provision.
• Investigation and research of the legal framework pertaining to data provision for research as well as compliance with the current regulations.
• Development of IT support for the Data Trust Office’s tasks and processes.

The infrastructure required to manage the Data Trust Office's tasks can draw on TUD’s Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) resources. The ZIH offers a secure and protected infrastructure, which is evaluated and monitored to make sure it meets the current legal standards by Unit 3.5 Information Security.

The planned work has been split into five work packages which are oriented around the central focal points: design / processes, legal framework and IT support. These are intertwined by agile development and common use cases. There is an additional work package that regulates the compliance of all developments.