Agricultural Data Space (Deployment)

Deliverables and expected outcome

• Technical infrastructure for the Common European Agriculture Data Space

• Data governance documentation, comprising a set of rules of legislative, administrative and contractual nature, that determine the rights to access, process, use and share data in a trustworthy and transparent manner.

• Provision of access to High Value Data Sets relevant for the EU Agricultural domain.

• Data-space specific Code of conduct and contract template relevant to the data space. • Guidance/training documentation for the stakeholders willing to join the data space. • Once the data space is deployed: quarterly report on usage; problem management along with documented solutions to overcome problems.

The objective is to deploy a secure and trusted data space to enable the agriculture sector to transparently share and access data, allowing for an increase in its economic and environmental performance. The sharing of private and public data will provide a basis for applications and new services that will contribute to achieving the objectives of the EU Data Strategy, the Green Deal and the Common Agricultural Policy. The objective is also to support the initiative taking into account the potential creation of a European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC).

The scope includes establishing and implementing an operational data space dedicated to sharing agricultural data. This endeavour encompasses deploying the data space, alongside instituting governance and business models for its operation. Engagement with the community is pivotal, ensuring alignment with European, national, and local initiatives, as well as with other sectoral data spaces. This initiative will also need to continuously monitor the data space in view of gauging its 56 effectiveness and relevance. The awarded proposal(s) will use, in so far as possible and when available, the smart cloud-to-edge middleware platform Simpl.65 It will also work in close partnership with the Data Spaces Support Centre deployed under the first WP 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; and data governance models. Right from the outset, the awarded proposal(s) is/are expected to work towards achieving financial sustainability by the conclusion of the action and consider relevant actions in this respect. 66 The project will need to take into consideration the work and recommendations of the preparatory action for the data space in agriculture and interoperability actions supported by the Digital Europe programme67 as well as of the Horizon Europe Partnership Agriculture of Data. The active participation of data providers and users from the project's inception is highly recommended since it will ensure that the data space is designed and structured to meet their needs, making the data space more relevant and leading to increased adoption rates and a stronger sense of ownership of data providers and users by the end of the project’s runtime.