Data Spaces Alliance Finland – a network of data business pioneers launched

Data spaces create opportunities for companies to accelerate growth and innovation, secure access to critical resources and enable the sale and sharing of data between multiple actors. Data space technologies are also important enablers for the development of artificial intelligence solutions. 

By bringing together the key players and active data space initiatives, we will ensure their seamless interplay and the competitiveness of Finnish players in the European data economy and more broadly internationally.   

At the end of the Nordic Data Festival 2024 on 10 April, the Data Spaces Alliance Finland network was launched. It brings together Finnish pioneers in the data business and provides its members with a unified view on the development of cross-organisational solutions.    

The 22 founding members of the alliance signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which creates a lightweight governance model for goal-oriented cooperation between the actors.   

The founding members are:   

1001 Lakes, Business Finland, CSC, DataSpace Europe, Fintraffic, Finnish Land Survey, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Headai, Kela, Loihde, MyData Global, Nokia, Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS), Platform of Trust, Siili Solutions, Sitra, SIX Mobile Work Machines, Smart City Innovation Cluster (SCIC), Struggle Creative, Technology Industries, TIEKE and VTT.  

Members of the Alliance can be organisations that are key partners in Finnish data space projects (contributors) and organisations that enable Finnish data space projects through funding and resources (supporters). The target group of the alliance are companies and organisations that use or could use data spaces data in their business (users). For data space projects, the alliance offers support for growth and learning together and provides an efficient way to connect to pan-European networks. 

The Alliance builds on proven cooperation models in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and other countries, as well as on lessons learned from Finnish data space initiatives in different sectors.

A new Sitra study was also published in conjunction with the Nordic Data Festival, which takes a closer look at the current state of Finnish data space initiatives and encourages cross-organisational cooperation in the data business.