The creation of European data spaces for public administrations, the common data infrastructures and governance frameworks, which facilitates data pooling, access and sharing have relied on open source tools. During the previous EU administration, one of the essential tools was a EU-funded middleware platform Simpl, and the list of open High-value datasets. Simpl has ensured the EU data sets infrastructures to be interconnected and interoperables, and now the upcoming Commission has to further develop and implement it in the future sectoral data spaces. In parallel, the previous EU administration established the list of open high-value datasets, and now the upcoming Commission shall assist national administrations for its implementation.   

Open Source cornerstone: Simpl 
Simpl is an open source platform that supports data access and interoperability in European data initiatives. It provides multiple compatible components, free to use, that adhere to a common standard of data quality and data sharing. This EU-funded initiative was launched in January this year and has the following deliverables:

• Simpl-Open: the open source software stack that will provide power to data spaces and other cloud-to-edge- federations initiatives. 

• Simpl-Labs: the playground environment for data spaces’ early testing (deployment, maintenance and support of the open source software stack) and interoperability assessment with Simpl-Open

• Simpl-Live: customised production environments for sectoral data spaces managed by the Commission. Since it is the last phase of the project, there is no code information available in code.europa. 

Technical studies are being carried out to assess the effective use of Simpl-Open in five areas: public administrations, Green Deal, health, and research and innovation. For this year, the priority of the projects is to create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that meets the common needs of most data spaces. In the future, the European Data Space Community will take over the management (currently done by the Commission).

Simpl works on the development of eleven functionalities, including users onboarding, IT governance, set up of ID/Trust and catalogues, and options for consumers regarding access to catalogues and contracts.  

Simpl code and development status are available on the EU institutions code development platform (code.europa.eu).

Open Source for High-value datasets
In December 2022, the Commission adopted a relevant Implementing Regulation which identifies the following categories as high-value datasets held by public administration: geospatial, earth observation and environment, meteorological, statistics, companies and ownership, and mobility. This classification is based on the original six categories defined by the Open Data Directive. The high-value datasets listed must be made available for re-use under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) or, alternatively, under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence or an equivalent or less restrictive open licence. The Implementing Regulation entered into force on 9 June 2024.

Will the upcoming Commission promote Open source for the EU data spaces? 

As the Commission is in the process of changing hands, it is unclear how the new Commissioners will prioritise open source solutions for the EU's data spaces. However, the new Commission will share the ambitions of its predecessors and should therefore rely on the existing open source tools to make them a reality.