Building a bridge Between Data Spaces
Athumi's Interoperability Approach
Europe is developing data spaces across skills, health, mobility, and other sectors. But a critical question emerges: are these becoming interoperable infrastructures, or sophisticated silos?
The DS4Skills project is accelerating the development of a European skills data space through eight strategic use cases across Europe. Most follow a clear path: consume or contribute data or services within the DS4Skills ecosystem. But Athumi, as a data intermediary in Flanders, together with research partner IMEC, takes a different approach: how can two mature, autonomous ecosystems work together without losing what makes each valuable?
Federation, not integration
Athumi is already successfully operating its own ecosystem in Flanders with a unique architecture, legal framework, and governance model for personal data exchange – including eIDAS-compliant authentication, and a strong focus on unlocking the potential of government verified data. These features make our ecosystem trustworthy for citizens and institutions, but they also mean we can’t simply plug into other data spaces – particularly when those spaces use different or lower levels of authentication and consent management.
Our use case explores how Athumi’s ecosystem with personal data and DS4Skills can be linked while retaining their respective autonomy. We’re identifying minimal viable interoperability that creates meaningful cross-ecosystem value without deep and complex integration.
This approach addresses three critical challenges:
- Avoiding European fragmentation by demonstrating how distinct data spaces can interoperate without architectural conformity.
- Enabling cross-border visibility so Flemish data and services become discoverable at European level – and vice versa – without compromising established and trusted governance models.
- Creating scalability foundations for future collaborations between ecosystems without forcing full technical or legal integration.
The multiplier effect
Our focus on ecosystem interoperability creates a multiplier effect: by solving connection at the infrastructure level, we unlock access to entire catalogues rather than negotiating individual data flows. Connect two ecosystems, access all data from both sides.
When we achieve interoperability, government-verified Belgian personal data becomes available to the European skills ecosystem – diploma verification, educational credentials, student attestations, and any future data points. All with proper consent management and privacy protection.
This could revolutionise European skills matching by combining the trust and authenticity of government data with the innovation and scale of European data spaces.
The technical challenges
Making this vision real requires solving three interconnected challenges:
- Federated Catalogues: Creating mutual discoverability through metadata exchange using standard vocabularies, without harmonizing underlying systems.
- Consent Model Mapping: Investigating how Athumi’s consent model and DS4Skills’ consent model can recognize and accept each other’s frameworks – or whether a common model is needed for cross-ecosystem data exchange.
- Authentication Bridging: Connecting eIDAS High-level identity verification with DS4Skills’ username/password systems through identity federation and “step-up” authentication approaches.
Testing federation at European scale
Europe’s data landscape will inevitably be diverse. Different sectors, countries, and governance traditions will produce different ecosystems. The question is whether these can work together or remain isolated islands of value.
Our use case is essentially an experiment: can meaningful interoperability work while respecting autonomy? Can federation deliver value without requiring conformity?
The answer might be “no”. We haven’t started building yet, so we’re working with hypotheses rather than proven solutions. The gaps between governance models, identity systems, and consent frameworks might be larger than we anticipate. What looks elegant on paper may prove impractical in reality.
Still, it’s worth finding out. Success would prove that European data spaces can work together without sacrificing what makes each one trustworthy and unique.
Author: Leenke De Donder, Product Manager (Athumi)
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