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Funding to boost maturity of Finnish data space initiatives 

Heads up! This coming autumn, Sitra will open a Gaia-X Finland funding call to boost the maturity of business-driven data sharing use cases and potential data space initiatives.

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This autumn, Sitra will be inviting companies or consortia to submit project proposals to develop pilots for business value creation enabled by cross-organisational data sharing. 

We expect to allocate up to a €1 million to co-fund pilots or trials that contribute to the development of the Fair Data Economy in Finland and align with the Gaia-X principles (see below). The funding call is an opportunity for organisations to gain experience in data sharing and value creation and to participate in the pan-European co-creation effort to build data spaces of the future. 

Register for the information session on 5 September at 1pm EET: https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/information_session 

The funding call is part of the activities of the Gaia-X Finland Hub, which Sitra coordinates. 

What is Gaia-X?


According to the EU Data Strategy, in 2025, the European digital data economy is estimated to be worth €829 billion. The total data value can be unlocked when we combine different data types from various sources across sectors. To do this, we need to have a robust data infrastructure, interoperability standards and respect for fair data principles. 

Gaia-X is the European solution to the development of a common data infrastructure, a cloud and data governance framework, the definition of certification standards, and establishment of a strategic research and innovation agenda. Gaia-X seeks to define the future characteristics of compliance, identity, trust and data exchange and to outline the architecture of the European Cloud. 

Taking European values as starting point, the development of Gaia-X architecture is guided by the following principles: 

  • European data protection 
  • Openness and transparency 
  • Authenticity and trust 
  • Digital sovereignty and self-determination
  • Free market access and European value creation 
  • Modularity and interoperability 
  • User-friendliness 

The project proposals for the Gaia-X Finland funding call should align with these high-level principles.  

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