Data Space for Skills (deployment)

• Technical infrastructure for the deployment of the data space for skills;

• Data governance documentation, comprising a set of rules of legislative, administrative and contractual nature covering access rights, processing, using and sharing data in a trustful and transparent manner;

• Code of conduct and contract template;

• Guidance/training documents for the stakeholders willing to join the data space;

• Once the data space is deployed: quarterly and on an ad hoc basis reporting on usage, problems detected, and solutions provided;

• A report about the connection of the data space with EU initiatives on skills and qualifications data, such as for example initiatives linked to the Digital Skills & Jobs Coalition.

The objective is to develop and deploy a secure and trusted data space for skills. Data is at the core of skills, education, training and employment, offering enormous potential for innovative applications. Databases of job offers, qualifications, learning opportunities, lists of curricula and certifications, inventory of topics studied at all levels of education and training, as well as skills classifications, can help better define human resource, business, employment as well as education and training policy strategies and add value for learners. The data space for skills is a European Common Data Space for sharing and accessing skills data for various purposes, from analytical and statistical purposes to policy development or re-use in innovative applications in line with European values, with a particular emphasis on ethics, diversity and privacy.

The awarded proposal will integrate, test and deploy the data space for skills, based on existing technical building blocks and on the concept and design elaborated in the framework of the preparatory action on data space for skills. It will also provide continuous maintenance operations of the data space, monitor the usage of the data space and offer a helpdesk. The awarded proposal will use, in so far as possible and when available, the smart cloud-to-edge middleware platform Simpl56. It will also work in close partnership with the Data Spaces Support Centre57 in order to ensure alignment with the rest of the ecosystem of data spaces implemented with the support of Digital Europe Programme, in particular in view of a data spaces reference architecture; common building blocks, toolboxes and standards, semantic interoperability; and data governance models. Right from the outset, the awarded proposal is expected to work towards achieving financial sustainability by the conclusion of the awarded proposal and consider relevant actions in this respect. Complementarity will be sought with other existing tools such as Europass, ESCO, European Digital Credentials for Learning, European Learning Model, EURES, the EU Digital Identity Wallet or Skills-OVATE, by establishing links to actions of these initiatives as appropriate. The awarded proposal will closely collaborate with and integrate the work from a project funded in the call DIGITAL-2022-CLOUD-AI-03 which aims at delivering open building blocks for a data space supporting growth and education and take into consideration the work and recommendations of the preparatory action for the data space for skills launched under Digital Europe WP 2021-2022 (DIGITAL 2021-PREPACTS-DS-01-SKILLS.