BDVA’s input to the European Data Union Strategy

The Big Data Value Association (BDVA) has released its input to the European Data Union Strategy. BDVA welcomes a renewed data strategy for Europe, that builds on the foundations of the previous Data Strategy from 2020 and emphasises that data should remain at the core of Europe’s Digital Strategy at large, with the focus must be on accelerating the speed to generate value out of data for European business and society, making companies and the public sector more efficient, competitive and innovative, creating new business opportunities and equipping professionals and citizens with strong data skills.

BDVA advocates for the development of “AI-data value ecosystems” (as outlined in its response to the AI Continent Action Plan) to better align data and AI strategies and value chains. In this context, BDVA sees Data Labs as a foundational framework for accelerating the development of these ecosystems, by enabling the convergence of AI and data at the “last mile”, therefore serving as a reference model to learn from and to extend this convergence across the entire AI lifecycle. To advance this vision, BDVA proposes fostering dialogue with AI Factories.

While acknowledging the importance of AI and broader digital advancements, BDVA reasserts that data remains the cornerstone of innovation, competitiveness and public value creation. As such, updated policies and investments in data (data sharing ecosystems, data platforms, data technology and services, data research and innovation, data companies and data skills) are essential not only to support AI and digital strategies in the current context of strategic autonomy, but also critical as engines of economical and societal value in their own.

In addition to the above-mentioned high-level recommendations, the BDVA community suggests a set of actionable recommendations linked to these three objectives identified by the European Commission can be summarised as follows:

I) Scale-up data use and availability (with a strong focus on data for AI):

• Invest in AI-ready data tools, frameworks, benchmarks and standards.
• Use Data Labs as a framework to accelerate the convergence of AI and data ecosystems.
• Boost new industrial collaboration models for the creation of vertical foundation models.
• Continue and consolidate public and private investments to achieve sustainable, scalable and interoperable data spaces and data sharing ecosystems.
• Establish a European coordination body to achieve convergence on the current fragmented efforts in setting up data spaces.
• Introduce incentives for data producers and data intermediaries.
• Grow the ecosystem of new data companies in Europe.
• Establish data innovation hubs in all regions of Europe.
• Invest in synthetic data.

II) Simplification:

• Apply a holistic approach to data and digital legislation.
• Develop automated compliance solutions (RegTech) and new paradigms in regulation for automation.
• Address legal barriers for research and innovation transfer to market

III) International data strategy: 

• Develop and support international standards and protocols.
• Contribute to the definition of global data governance principles.
• Invest in collaborative research and innovation, launch pilot projects and support referential lighthouse projects (e.g., International Manufacturing-X).

You can find the whole text here.

Call to Action. Role of BDVA 

BDVA is a European non-profit association with over 250 members from industry (including SMEs, startups and large companies), research, academia and the public sector, all united by a mission to create value for society and industry through data and AI innovation. The AI Continent Action Plan and the European Data Strategy are central to BDVA’s mission and objectives. As a private member of the EuroHPC JU, a founding member and strong contributor to the AI, Data and Robotics Partnership in HE and a strong player in the data spaces ecosystem of projects and activities, BDVA actively contributes to achieving all foreseen objectives of the European Data Union Strategy.

This position paper reflects the consolidated input of the BDVA community, gathered through targeted workshops, discussions of the Board of Directors, task forces and expert consultations.