(V1.0 August 2024)
The Strategic Agenda of BDVA has three primary objectives:
- Define BDVA scope and priorities. Guide the activities of the BDVA community, identifying key challenges, opportunities, regulations and policies, and social and technological trends in Europe and globally.
- Inform policymakers and industry. Provide insights and recommendations to policymakers and industry stakeholders based on identified research, innovation, and deployment challenges within the established scope of BDVA.
- Coordinate Task Forces and maximize their output: Set priorities for Task Forces (TF) and create a cohesive framework for collaboration among them, ensuring synergies with external communities and partners.
Figure 1. BDVA Strategic Themes 2024
The BDVA Strategic Agenda 2024 is articulated around five strategic themes, visualised in Figure 1. Each strategic themes is structured as follows:
- Introductory part: explain the theme in detail and present some high-level objectives.
- Context, policy and trends: (i) place the theme in context regarding Europe and international innovation ecosystem, industry and society, (ii) provide an overview of the European policy landscape, and (iii) identify relevant trends related to the theme and under the scope of BDVA.
- Challenges: based on the context and trends, identify key problems and barriers that are hindering the achievement of the set objectives and that should be addressed in the following years. Depending on the theme, this section can include technical, societal, business, or legal challenges.
- Opportunities and priorities: considering all of the above, identify potential opportunities for Europe and propose actions for the TF to materialise the opportunities following the set BDVA priorities.
The Strategic Agenda 2024 has been developed by the BDVA community through a series of workshops and activities initiated in September 2023:
- Most of the TF have contributed with inputs collected through dedicated expert discussions on their specific expertise domains.
- The BDVA Technical Board (TB) has provided advice and recommendations during its monthly meetings.
- The BDVA Activity Group meetings have had the opportunity to review and provide feedback from the community at large.
- The BDVA Board of Director (BoD) has been constantly reviewing and approving the different stages along the Strategic Agenda production process.
- Interaction through different sessions with research and innovation projects under European funding programs, mainly Horizon Europe, have identified challenges and crafted expected outcomes.
- BDVA driven events (e.g., European Big Data Value Forum, Data Week) have shared with the broadest possible community some parts of the Strategic Agenda and have harvested inputs from several external experts.
The table below lists the most relevant sessions devoted to this exercise:
| Session | Date | Content |
| BDVA Task Forces dedicated workshops (Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Spaces, Ecosystem, Business, SMI, High-Performance Computing(HPC)/BD/AI, Agrifood, Data protection, Health, Policy and Societal, etami, Smart Governance and Smart Cities) | Online, September 2023 | Initial round of workshops with members, to collect feedback about trends, challenges, opportunities and priorities on their respective domains |
| BDVA Activity Group meeting dedicated workshop | Brussels, September 2023 | Presentation to BDVA community at large, discussion and feedback collection |
| BDVA TB meeting | Brussels, September 2023 | Review with TB experts, recommendations on the way forward |
| European Big Data Value Forum 2023 | Valencia, October 2023 | Strategic themes presented and discussed in a panel with external players. Multiple sessions providing input |
| BDVA TB meeting | Valencia, October 2023 | Strategic themes reviewed with TB experts, advice on scope and key technical topics |
| Data Week 2024 (part 1) | Darmstadt, March 2024 | Multiple sessions providing input. Presentation to BDVA and external community |
| BDVA TFs meeting | April, May 2024 | Presentation and gathering of feedback of content specific strategic themes to specific TFs |
| Data Week 2024 (part 2) | Leuven, June 2024 | Multiple sessions providing input. Presentation to BDVA and external community |
| BDVA Activity Group dedicated workshop | Online, June 2024 | Deep dives on strategic themes and feedback from community |
| BDVA TB meeting | Online, July 2024 | Presentation to TB experts of final draft and collection of recommendations. |
| BDVA BoD regular meetings | Sep 2023 – June 2024 | Approval of the process, periodic presentation of status of the document, follow-up and approval of next steps |
The Strategic Agenda is a dynamic document designed to adapt and evolve over time. While the main strategic themes have been set up as a consistent guide in the years to come, the associated insights, challenges, opportunity and priorities will be regularly reviewed and updated, ensuring that they remain relevant and capable of impacting the ongoing discussions in the research and innovation ecosystem.
The input collected for the production of the Strategic Agenda has also been partially shared along the way with other communities for alignment. In particular content has been shared as input to the EuroHPC JU RIAG, to the ADRA SRIDA, as input for the Roadmap for future data spaces of the Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC), and to internal discussion in the AIOTI R&I Work Group.