TRUSTEE

TRUSTEE project aims to bring a secure, trustworthy, and privacy-aware framework which aggregates various interdisciplinary data repositories (healthcare, education, energy, space, automotive, cross-border, etc.) and also considers other European data federation spaces as well as trans-national initiatives, such as Gaia-X, IDSA, and Copernicus. TRUSTEE's major goal is to offer a secure-by-design framework, allowing researchers to search and use data in the encrypted domain. TRUSTEE will promote AI explainability, interoperability, and re-usability, by:

·       utilizing state-of-the-art methods and paradigms;

·       compliance with European privacy and ethical frameworks;

·       enforcing privacy by applying a Homomorphic encryption layer, through which all data interaction will take place;

·       a blockchain-based transaction recorder to ensure accountability.

TRUSTEE fully encrypted solution will be validated through six different use cases, also supporting data spaces such as GAIA-X, IDS, and Copernicus, demonstrating a multi-disciplinary, Pan-European federated FAIR and private data ecosystem. The standardisation objectives of TRUSTEE are focused on contributing to the standardisation landscape with a focus on areas relevant to the project and a special interest in contributing to the area of Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), especially connected to the usage of Homomorphic Encryption in the TRUSTEE platform, and common European data spaces.

Reason for applying to HSbooster.eu services

The project is applying for a Standardisation Booster service since TRUSTEE aspires to contribute to the current standardisation landscape in areas relevant for the project scope, including:

• privacy-enhancing technologies;
• data interoperability;
• common European data spaces. 

Based on the stated areas of interest for TRUSTEE’s standardisation activities, they have selected Common European data spaces, Data interoperability, and Trustworthy AI as the open call topics TRUSTEE would like to participate in, due to the relevant role privacy enhancing technologies have for trustworthy AI, and the alignment of the open call topics with TRUSTEE’s objectives. The project has performed an initial analysis of standardisation activities related to TRUSTEE, and also conducted a standardisation survey within the project consortium with the aim of identifying standardisation gaps, standards already used in TRUSTEE, and standards and specifications of interest for TRUSTEE (e.g., IDSA Dataspace Protocol, Homomorphic Encryption Standard, etc.). Additionally, the standardisation topics of interest for TRUSTEE are identified as priority topics of the current Horizon Standardisation Booster call, which we perceive as encouraging regarding TRUSTEE's potential to contribute to the standardisation landscape.

As several standardisation gaps relevant for the scope of the TRUSTEE project and related to the field of PETs, with the focus on homomorphic encryption, they have noticed the following - there is a lack of standards related to the usage of PETs in the context of their application in data sharing and common data spaces, especially as the data space paradigm is becoming increasingly prevalent, and taking into account that the field of privacy enhancing technologies is rapidly evolving. Additionally, there is a lack of implementation and application guidelines for the integration and use of specific PETs for data sharing among various data spaces and data domains that would also include the privacy-preserving, ethical and legal use of data, while also addressing contractual aspects for data spaces and their participants. Additional identified gaps include lack of standards for data semantic interoperability across different data domains and cross-data space exchanges.

The project is seeking support in terms of guidance on choosing the appropriate type of standardisation activity for TRUSTEE to be involved in, in line with the current maturity of the TRUSTEE platform, as well as the Standardisation Organisations to engage with. It would also like to receive advice on how to get engaged in standardisation activities and eventually approach the Standardisation Organisations of interest.