Preparatory actions for the data space for skills

Outcomes and deliverables

The coordination and support action will provide:

• An inventory of existing platforms collecting, storing and sharing data relevant for education and skills (public and private). A particular focus should be placed on the analysis of skills relevant for attaining the targets of the Digital Decade;
• A proposed design approach based on scenarios with corresponding business models;
• A multi-stakeholder governance scheme specific to the sector;
• A blueprint for the data space including an architecture considering common building blocks;
• Interim results in due time to inform the development of the implementation action to be supported under the next Work Programme;
• Input to the work of the Data Spaces Support Centre.

The objective is to deploy a secure and trusted data space to support sharing and accessing skills data for various purposes, from analytical and statistical purposes to policy development or re-use in innovative applications. The data space will provide easy, cross-border access to key datasets, deploying trust mechanisms (security and privacy by design) and develop data services matching European values, in particular of ethics, diversity and privacy.

The Digital Decade sets an ambitious target of 20 million digital technology specialists by 2030. Several important initiatives at the European level as well as national/regional level will contribute to this target, thus making important that data be shared across all initiatives.

Data is at the core of skills and education, offering enormous potential for innovative applications. Databases of job offers, lists of curricula and certifications, inventory of topics studied at all levels of education can help better defining human resource, training, business or educational policy strategies.

Schools, universities, learning organisations, businesses, students, HR organisations and employment agencies make daily use of data, from job and occupational profiles, vacancies and skills, to available trainings, degrees and graduate numbers. Many of the education and skills data are highly sensitive, involving personal information. They also have a huge potential to improve skills intelligence and HR planning, learning material and processes, through artificial intelligence, data analytics or advanced technologies.

The level of fragmentation at the European level is high, involving many private and public actors, from job search websites, online learning providers to school administrations, ministries, universities, etc.

The project will explore conceptual approaches and possible options and for the future deployment of this data space. Provisions for transparent and ethical data access and use, development of governance and business models for the data space are to be developed considering, among others, the evolving regulatory environment, cross-data-space elements, interoperability, equality, privacy and security issues.

The action will engage the community of stakeholders involving organisations at EU/multi-country level, public administrations and/or governmental bodies, private and public actors (Including IT developers and end-users), education and training providers. In particular, the project will:

• Undertake an inventory of existing platforms collecting, storing and sharing education and skills data, in particular related to the green and digital transformations;
• Explore different possible design approaches for the data space (e.g. serving private data sharing and interests, that are also complemented by public data, serving private and public interests), and elaborate the advantages and disadvantages;
• Propose design/conceptual approaches, for the set-up of the data space, for the possible categorization of skills and identify common essential elements and develop corresponding business models;
• Explore what services and applications could be envisaged in the future;
• Develop a multi-stakeholder governance scheme of the data space;
• Get broad consensus on the approach, governance, and business models.

The action will have to work in partnership with the Data Spaces Support Centre (see topic 2.2.2.1) in order to ensure alignment with the European Data Spaces Technical Framework and the rest of the ecosystem of data spaces in section 2.2.1 thereof. The joint work will target the definition of:

• the data space reference architecture, building blocks and common toolboxes to be used;
• the common standards, including semantic standards and interoperability protocols, both domain-specific and crosscutting;
• the data governance models, business models and strategies for running data spaces.