Mutual recognition and collaboration between Gaia-x style federated dataspaces (eg Catena-X) and UNTP style decentralised communities.

[onthebreeze]

This ticket continues the technical discussion in issue #320 about interoperability with AAS (Asset Administration Shell) and databases. It expands the discussion towards more formal mutual recognition and partnership to the benefit of both frameworks. Our premise is that mutual recognition and collaboration towards interoperability between Gaia-X (federated model) and UNTP (decentralised model) is better than competition and is advantageous for both.

The distinction between federated (Gaia-x) and decentralised (UNTP) is important. Both have a place and EU has been using both terms. This is not a competition between two instruments of the same architecture. Instead these are different but not incompatible frameworks.

• Federated frameworks work well when there is a governing community owner that issues identities and defines rules. That could work well where there are logical political Groupings (eg EU)
• A global framework just by its nature has to be more decentralised. So there is no reason at all why any number of federated communities cannot be linked up using a decentralised model.

There is some conceptual similarity too between UNTP core and it's extensions - and Gaia-X as a core architecture and it's industry specific implementations like catena-x.

Attached to this ticket is what a deep research AI thinks about UNTP / Gaia-X collaboration (Thanks @JohnOnGH). It may not be 100% accurate but it looks pretty good to me and certainly offers us a good starting point.

Please comment on this ticket with your thoughts and opinions on this topic.

UN Protocol, GAIA-X Collaboration_.pdf

[susanne-guth-orlowski]

UNTP and Federated Data Spaces to not exclude each other. You can create a federated data space with UNTP technology. Also Gaia-X is not a clear term anymore. The original architecture was based on DIDs and VC. What it is today - I don't know. More a cloud focused concept.

Let differentiate between public data and non-public data exchange. Data Spaces that have members can be a good means to manage access to non-public (dpp and supply chain) data.

Just a small comment on your description above:
Federated frameworks work well when there is a governing community owner that issues memberships (not identities) and defines rules. That could work well where there are logical industry, product or political groupings (e.g. automotive, Tyre, EU)

[JohnOnGH]

The prompt I used to drive the AI Deep Research was deliberately positively expressed, the final sentence being: "Research and propose how the two initiatives could collaborate and support each other and what changes would be necessary to make this
possible." AI Deep Research, certainly Gemini's flavour of it, is an enthusiastic pursuer of research goals. While it is now less likely to make things up, it will energetically argue the case you've asked for.

This means that we should consider wether we think the arguments put forward in the research output are credible. I think they are, at least in principle.

Page 7 of the PDF contains a paragraph (3rd) that describes how a collaboration could work in practical terms, where UNTP provides veracity of data, and GAIA-X provides data control and sovereignty.

The details matter of course, and no doubt there are details in the research that can (should) be questioned, or that are incorrect (AI does still make mistakes). However the principle seems well supported: UNTP and GAIA-X should collaborate to their, and all of our, mutual benefit. As the ever enthusiastic AI research concludes page 7:

"Therefore, UNTP and GAIA-X are not just complementary; they are mutually dependent for achieving their fullest potential, especially within the European regulatory and political context. One provides the trusted content—the verifiable facts about the real
world. The other provides the trusted context—the sovereign environment in which that content can be shared, analyzed, and acted upon. The successful integration of these two initiatives is the key to building a holistic architecture of trust for the 21st-century
economy."

It's not all superlatives though. The table in section IV lists what the AI Research considers to be "alignments, divergences and synergies". Of these the "governance model" is described as the most divergent and the primary hurdle for formal collaboration.

From my perspective, we should seek collaboration.