“Gaia-X can strengthen the role of Austrian industry in global value chains” – Prof. Stefanie Lindstaedt, CEO Know-Center and Director of the Institute of Interactive Systems and Data Science (ISDS) TU Graz, about Gaia-X
Gaia-X aims to build a high-performance, competitive, secure and trustworthy data infrastructure for Europe. This will enable Europe to successfully position itself or differentiate itself from the Asian and American regions. The data-driven digital transformation is accelerated while data sovereignty is ensured.
Why Austria should also participate in Gaia-X
For Austria as an export-oriented country, participation is important because it enables new forms of cooperation between companies. Open interfaces and transparent standards are to be used to create future data services that enable uniform access to production and delivery data of all participants in a supply chain and ensure security and transparency. Smaller companies in particular can benefit from this in order to participate in increasingly globalised markets, expand business relationships and increase their competitiveness in the digital sphere. Overall, the role of Austrian industry in global value chains can be strengthened and Austria can be positioned as a pioneer in the field of Industry 4.0.
At the same time, there are numerous initiatives, actors and research projects in Austria whose expertise and results can be incorporated into this initiative. For example, within the framework of the EU project TRUSTS (Trusted Secure Data Sharing Space), the lighthouse project Data Market Austria (DMA) has succeeded in networking with the Industrial Data Space (IDS), which forms the technological basis for Gaia-X.
National Hubs – also in Austria
So-called “National Hubs” have already been set up in Germany, France and Finland within the framework of Gaia-X. It would make sense to set up such a hub in Austria as well in order to bundle national interests and activities and implement use cases. One challenge will be to integrate the areas of politics, business and science equally in order to advance digitalisation. Important European developments such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), Data Spaces, Big Data initiatives, etc. should also be incorporated accordingly.
Integrating perspectives and expertise in national hubs
Building a European data infrastructure is a long-term undertaking, which is why future trends and developments must be taken into account accordingly. Within the framework of the DIO – Data Intelligence Offensive, for example, the Know-Center contributes its expertise with regard to future technology developments. This is precisely the great strength of the networking platform: by involving different stakeholders in the field of the data community, topics along the entire data spectrum are covered, such as Big Data, Data Spaces, Privacy Preserving, etc. The DIO should therefore play an essential role in building a national hub to integrate these different perspectives and expertise into Gaia-X.
