Data is seen as the modern oil for driving economy and indeed several major actors (global companies, rich countries) are working on strategies of how to define the evolving data space. It also seems to be agreed that we are in front of a huge transformation due to the ubiquitous digitisation in all domains of life – some call it the next revolution [1]. IoT is not only part of this transformation but one of its motors with its billions of smart devices deployed every. These devices not only communicate amongst each other, but in particular create endless streams of data to be managed and processed. The vision of building a Global Integrated Data Space (GIDS) covering all types of digital objects and respecting data sovereignty seems to be clear, but the way to achieve the goal is in debate.

Major Challenges

As a few decades ago when TCP/IP was agreed upon as an interlinking mechanism between the many heterogeneous networks, we need to reduce complexity created by the ongoing dynamical technical innovation and define a basic organisation mechanism: the FDOs.

This will not be sufficient of course, since to achieve machine actionability which is paving the way towards more automated processing, we need a systematic approach towards defining and registering schemas and semantic categories in open registries.

Even more challenging is to overcome the social hurdles that will hamper partly competing actors to easily agree on generic standards and the many actors that are afraid of losing data sovereignty.

Therefore we will organize a session that covers the mentioned aspects in a panel format which will include time for questions/comments from the audience. The panel will address three topics presented and discussed by field experts:

• Vision and infrastructural needs
• Big infrastructural challenges and need of standards
• Candidates for standards