The Multilayered Future of Digital Public Infrastructure

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) refers to the digital systems and solutions essential for a society's functioning in the digital world. Digital public infrastructures are fundamental for enabling digital services to function, improving public service delivery, ensuring that citizens have access to the benefits of the digital age, and supporting economic growth. The infrastructures play a crucial role in the digital transformation of societies and economies and are often based on collaboration between government agencies, the private sector, and civil society.

The fundamental role of digital public infrastructures requires critical building blocks to perform their essential functions without too complex a scope or architecture. However, today, it remains common for organisations to develop large systems with complex features instead of ensuring simplicity and modularity that could safeguard the solutions' viability and maintenance over the entire life cycle. Fulfilling a higher number of requirements is often prioritised over long-term sustainability.

The modularity of digital public infrastructure is essential in the future when the European digital infrastructure will have multiple parallel layers with various interoperable solutions for data exchange. Data spaces are stealing ground from other existing solutions, and the implementation focus is shifting towards ecosystem-level federations required by the evolving European and global public and industry-driven data spaces that create the prerequisites for advanced data-sharing and utilisation. Yet, the existing infrastructures remain in use for their expected lifecycle when reasonable.

The modular approach to building digital public infrastructure

It is apparent that countries and organisations still count on the success of digital public infrastructures that add plenty of features on top of core data exchange, for example, by adding business domain-specific features that serve the business processes but add complexity to the development and maintenance of the solution. Every project with over ten years of history is aware of the increasing need for software modularity and, hence, the possibility of replacing specific components.

The modular approach in building digital public infrastructure is essential as it contributes to both the architecture of the digital government stack and the product's quality. Modularity allows for replacing outdated technologies no longer supported, connecting new components that add to the core features and functionalities, and reducing technical debt in the product's codebase.

Besides the technical aspects, it is possible to eliminate regulatory complexities by modularity. The possibility of altering specific components of the digital public infrastructure without massive rebuilding is an effective way to ensure it remains vital in its critical role in compliance with the existing regulations. The same logic applies to changing administrational processes when modularity allows replacing specific components even with other products that complement the public digital service offering.

Another benefit of modularity is the capability of utilising other products, primarily open-source software, to distribute the development effort between multiple parties. It allows modularly organising the procurement and development work according to the components and clarifies the product's roadmap. In contrast to complex monolith systems, flexible and modular digital public infrastructure building blocks allow for more effective use of government resources and avoid technical debt and legacy.

National, European and global interoperability layers

Regarding data exchange, digital public infrastructures have evolved through the years as a multilayered structure. National, European and global interoperability layers require and have been developed using different data exchange solutions.

National interoperability typically involves a data exchange layer, a product (i.e. X-Road, enterprise service bus, integration platform) or an API architecture with shared prerequisites and definitions. REST APIs are the most common interface for these services, but SOAP is still more widely utilised than commonly supposed. All of these solutions typically provide a service catalogue for data discovery.

At the European level, eDelivery has become the de facto standard for specific use cases involving most EU member states. The strength of eDelivery is its acceptance by and between the European administrations, which reduces planning and negotiation efforts in cross-border collaboration. However, eDelivery is based on the AS4 communication protocol, a standard for exchanging digital business documents, particularly in the contexts of businesses and governments, which has not gained such wide adoption as the REST APIs. Also, eDelivery is based on sector-specific implementations, and the way the common specifications are applied and/or extended differs in domain-specific use cases.

Data spaces have emerged as a new interoperability layer, which is combining many of the strengths of the national and European interoperability mechanisms. Data spaces allow for a wider variety of use cases and service provision in an ecosystem involving private and public organisations to share and exchange data under common governance policies, standards, and data exchange technologies. Hence, data spaces as a concept best support the EU policies' overall objectives to foster digital innovation and competitiveness across industries through initiatives such as the Digital Single Market and support the adoption of digital technologies and practices to enhance economic growth and efficiency.

The fourth interoperability layer is the global landscape of solutions used worldwide in daily activities and business processes, such as payment systems, air traffic control, (mostly planned) healthcare solutions, and even military interoperability (i.e. between the NATO members). Even though data sovereignty is a crucial priority for the EU, our everyday activities depend on global systems and services required for our societies to function. The EU regulations on data protect the EU citizens but, hopefully also in the future, allow for the necessary level of interoperability required globally.

The technology stack required for all the interoperability layers is relatively independent of the use cases, can be partly uniform, and supports most needs equally. The technologies are replaced now and then, but the concepts and use cases remain somewhat untouched. Therefore, discussing technology first increases complexity. The concept of data spaces allows for more freedom of technical choice than earlier data exchange models, where specific technologies or solutions were often prioritised or defined as common de facto standards.

It is beneficial to understand the roles of the different interoperability layers, approach each layer pragmatically, and select proper solutions for addressing the national, European and global use cases. The influence of data spaces is increasing, making future endeavours easier and replacing some of the existing infrastructure. However, working infrastructure should not be substituted because of trends but only to achieve better interoperability between solutions and services or to gain benefits at the ecosystem level.

Data spaces or "political data spaces"?

Data spaces provide a comprehensive approach to data exchange and data-sharing compared to other solutions used today. Data space producers and consumers benefit from enhanced control, security, interoperability, and compliance compared to traditional data exchange methods. These advantages enable organisations to improve data-driven processes and ensure responsible data sharing in an increasingly data-centric world. Data consumers gain access to a broad scope of data products hosted within data spaces. Data producers can explore monetisation opportunities within data spaces, allowing them to share data with authorised consumers and generate revenues.

Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC) defines data space as "a distributed system defined by a governance framework that enables secure and trustworthy data transactions between participants while supporting trust and data sovereignty. A data space is implemented by one or more infrastructures and enables one or more use cases."

The data space governance framework is defined as "the set of principles, standards, policies (rules/regulations), agreements and practices that apply to the governance, management, and operations (including business and technology aspects) of a data space as well as to the enforcement thereof, and the resolution of any conflicts."

Data space participants collectively contribute to the functioning of data spaces. Each role has specific responsibilities and contributes to the overall objective of responsible and efficient data sharing. Other data exchange solutions may enable and facilitate essential interoperability between systems. Still, data spaces with various participants comprehensively address data management and governance and provide increased technical flexibility in an orchestrated ecosystem.

Interoperable data spaces require the selection of common principles and standards and specifying how those can be used together. The Big Data Value Association (BDVA), FIWARE Foundation, Gaia-X and the International Data Space Association (IDSA) launched the Data Spaces Business Alliance (DSBA) to work together towards the definition of a common reference technology framework overcoming these challenges and helping to make data spaces real. The work is ongoing, but progress towards a common understanding of data spaces exists.

While all significant data space initiatives aim for the same outcome, there are differences in governance, technical and operational definitions. At the same time, the political discussion on data spaces has once in a while overheated, and solutions other than data spaces have been called as such. While the real challenges with data spaces should be tackled, creating "political data spaces" doesn't improve the situation. Giving the time and support needed for initiatives such as Gaia-X will build a solid foundation.

The success factors of cross-border interoperability

The exchange of medical prescriptions and patient summaries started cross-border between Estonia and Finland in January 2019, allowing EU patients to use digital prescriptions issued by their doctor when visiting a pharmacy in another EU country. The cross-border data exchange was occasionally falsely reported in the media as a use case for the X-Road Trust Federation, a feature enabling cross-border data exchange between federated ecosystems using the X-Road software. In fact, Estonia and Finland were the first EU member states to deploy the EU-wide eHealth Digital Service Infrastructure, which connects the eHealth national services.

One strength of the eHealth Digital Service Infrastructure is the number of participants: already in 2019, 22 EU member states participated in it and aimed to exchange ePrescriptions and Patient Summaries by the end of 2021. The eDelivery-based infrastructure allows for the smooth facilitation of data exchange – it is not necessary to start by debating the technical solution with each new data exchange launch between the EU member states. The number of participants agreeing upon the common methods has been the key reason for the success and the continued existence of the eHealth Digital Service Infrastructure and other eDelivery-based projects in various policy domains.

Considering the lessons learned from eDelivery, it is fair to conclude that the number of participants also plays a critical role in data space initiatives. With hundreds of European participants, Gaia-X is the flagship of European data space initiatives, having the critical mass to agree upon the common ground. Even though multiple projects aim for similar outcomes with data spaces, the critical mass of European participants should matter when selecting the basis for a common European infrastructure. However, this requires political support from the EU member states, and the involvement of the European governments is a precondition for Gaia-X to succeed. Data spaces are not intended for industry only but are a core solution for cross-sector and cross-border data transfer and sharing, and also with the public administration.

The EU is responding from its end with solutions to support the development. One is Simpl, a smart middleware that aims to enable cloud-to-edge federations and support all major data initiatives funded by the European Commission, such as common European data spaces. The Interoperable Europe Act accelerates the digital transformation of Europe's public sector and introduces a cooperation framework for public administrations across the EU to support cross-border data exchange.

The key conclusions are the need to build unified yet flexible digital infrastructures to facilitate interoperable data exchange, collaborate cross-border to increase user base, and enable market adoption in all sectors within the EU and beyond.

Promoting new while maintaining the benefits

Despite the rise of data spaces, the existing digital infrastructure typically serves well for the already implemented use cases. Maintaining digital infrastructure, which has already been invested in, is beneficial from the perspectives of both commercial and public interests.

Still, there are methods to enhance the existing digital infrastructure. For example, eDelivery could be complemented with an officially supported REST profile, increasing its opportunities to serve more widely as a core digital infrastructure building block within the EU. This idea, however, is controversial from the policy perspective if the aim is to advance the adoption of data spaces instead of encouraging more users to start with the preceding data exchange solutions.

To promote data spaces while maintaining the benefits of the existing digital infrastructures, the EU could boost the transformation by confirming its support for a common European data space infrastructure based on Gaia-X. This would encourage organisations to make technical choices and invest in their infrastructure accordingly. A precondition should be that the major data space initiatives first reach a consensus about the fundamental data space models, definitions and specifications.

Wider market adoption of Gaia-X and other data space initiatives is already taking place, but data spaces are still a novel endeavour for European governments, with a few exceptions. The model in which the private sector is paving the way with new structures of collaboration and data-sharing, and the EU policy level is ahead of the practical implementation, is something the governments may find challenging to follow. On the positive side, data spaces allow governments to rethink how public-private cross-sectoral data-sharing could be enabled harmoniously.

And this is just the beginning...

The building block approach and modularity allow for designing digital public infrastructure in the best possible way, considering future uncertainties. Maintaining modularity is necessary on both product and enterprise architectural levels.

Understanding the layers of interoperability enables all stakeholders to address their needs, utilising the right solutions and methods to maintain a sustainable digital infrastructure in domestic, European and global contexts. Even though European data sovereignty is a critical aspect to consider, it's necessary to recognise the global market open for both European and foreign businesses.

While data spaces open up new opportunities, the existing digital infrastructures should be utilised to the full extent while considering the shift towards the new model. An active steering at the policy level is necessary to ensure a smooth transition while safeguarding the benefits of past investments in digital infrastructure.

The European data strategy aims at creating a single market for data that will ensure Europe’s global competitiveness and data sovereignty. Common European data spaces will ensure that more data becomes available for use in the economy and society while companies and individuals who generate the data have control over it.

In addition to political and legal steps, action is needed in the form of more practical support and recognition for the ongoing initiatives where European organisations are united to facilitate change in the digital landscape. Gaia-X illustrates a project large enough to formulate a basis for a European de facto standard for data spaces.

Data spaces enable more effective data sharing between public and private sectors and different domains with modularity, flexibility, multiple operational and technical layers, and ecosystem-level federations. As more data spaces become operational, AI systems will gain access to various data sources, allowing for the development of advanced applications. And that's just the beginning of the journey.