In an increasingly protectionist world, data is sovereign but still needs to be exchanged between countries and this is the role for digital clearing houses for the Gaia-X data space
Belgian operator Proximus has launched its Gaia-X Digital Clearing House (GXDCH), a pivotal element in the Gaia-X initiative. Originally misunderstood as being a “European cloud” to challenge the hyperscalers the open source project Gaia-X, which has had more than €3.5bn in funding from the EU and member states, is essentially a public-private association that aims to automate regulations, keep data flows compliant and enforce “European values” in the digital space.
Gaia-X runs decentralised data spaces, which are shared zones where participants, typically grouped by industry, can trade data, knowing that everything in the space meets the same compliance standards.
The core principle behind Gaia-X is that participants should retain control over their data. Every data exchange between parties are fully aligned with European privacy and sovereignty requirements. To ensure this, participants must be certified against these criteria. This task is performed by the Gaia-X Digital Clearing Houses, of which Proximus is now one. The Clearing Houses are key to establish trust in digital cooperation within supply chains and industries, as envisioned by Gaia-X, no matter the infrastructure they’re using or their physical location.
Gaia-X Digital Clearing Houses are networks of execution nodes that ensures decentralised compliance across the Gaia-X ecosystem. These nodes safeguard the distributed and transparent nature of Gaia-X’s compliance framework, ensuring that it is not centrally operated by the association but open for use by anyone.
They apply compliance measures automatically. When data is exchanged between companies in different countries, the clearing house will automate data standards to ensure regulatory compliance across territories. In theory, this will standardise data flows and allow global organisations to deal digitally with one another more easily.
One of the most advanced industry-specific data spaces is Catena-X the first end-to-end, collaborative and open data ecosystem for the automotive industry. Featuring almost 200 members, Catena-X is Gaia-X compliant and also serves as a model for all Manufacturing-X initiatives and is shaping the development of standardised data ecosystems in other industries as well.
T-Systems has been a champion of Gaia-X for a number of years and in February, was selected as the first vendor to support Catena-X’s clients with connecting to the secure data ecosystem – after a testing phase comprising approximately 50 participants. Moreover, as a “Trust Anchor” for Gaia-X Digital Clearing House, T-Systems was also entrusted with the task of verifying new participants for Catena-X. This set the operator up to provide its services to operating companies or to data spaces – that are registered with Catena-X – to sublicense the services to their operating companies.
Going global
In October, NTT Data deployed a testbed for a Gaia-X Digital Clearing House in Japan – the first outside Europe. The deployment in Japan is part of a data space test bed project led by the University of Tokyo, with active participation from industry giants including Toshiba, SoftBank, NTT Data and NTT Communications. The purpose of this deployment is to create a development and testing environment that will facilitate the operation of interoperable Data Spaces within Japan’s digital ecosystem.
Proximus role
Gaia-X provides European technical standards that enable secure, transparent, and sovereign data exchange within industries. In this context, Proximus said it ensures decentralised compliance of secure data exchanges within the Gaia-X ecosystem.
With its “advanced technological architecture”, Proximus said it strengthens the European network of Digital Clearing Houses (e.g. Aruba, OVHcloud or T-Systems), and allows the Gaia-X initiative to reach the common objective: to advance open-source collaboration for resilient, decentralised and trusted data exchanges.
“Whether you’re a data provider aiming to share valuable data or a data consumer in search of reliable and compliant data sources, Proximus provides the federated infrastructure and technology essential for secure, efficient, and future-proof data exchanges within Gaia-X,” said Proximus digital & IT lead Antonietta Mastroianni.