Context

Every day and nearly all the time, citizens transmit data to their various counterparts and business partners as customers, users, participants, applicants or even as patients. The European Commission’s reports evidence massive data breaches and the mishandling of personal data by large online platforms.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies since 25 May 2018. Specifically, Article 20 has the purpose of making it significantly easier for citizens to have any data which is stored with one service provider transmitted directly to another provider. This means that providers of data processing services must adopt interoperable formats that enable data portability as soon as possible.

A standard operating procedure which is clear, feasible and predictable seems to provide good protection. However, it is still unclear how this theoretically plausible portability will be implemented. In this uncertain and underdeveloped path, advanced research is needed to set the principles to allow the implementation of Data Portability solutions and give the concerned persons better control over their personal data.

Data Portability and Services Incubator

Under the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, the Data Portability and Services Incubator (DAPSI) was launched in November 2019, to empower top internet innovators to develop human-centric technology solutions addressing the challenge of personal data portability on the internet as foreseen under the GDPR.

DAPSI will support up to 50 teams that will research and apply advancement to relevant uses cases through a 9-month programme. Experts in diverse fields will provide a successful working methodology, access to top infrastructure, training in business and data related topics, coaching, mentoring, visibility and community building. On top of that, each DAPSI team will receive up to €150k€ equity-free funding, distributing a total amount of €5.6M€ through three open calls.

In the first phase of the DAPSI programme, the participants will define and develop a prototype of the use case in a specific Data Portability sub domain, attend training sessions, pitch and access top infrastructures, with coaching support. The best teams will progress to the phase 2 where the use cases will be fostered to evolve into solid projects to gain enough traction for deployment and readiness for the market.

DAPSI has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement no 871498

Consortium

The consortium is formed by six organisations from five different European countries (Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Ireland), strategically selected due to their expertise.

ZABALA is a Spanish SME (over 240 employees) with wide experience in supporting entities in the management of their RTD and innovation activities, as well as in technology transfer projects and activities. It is a consolidated RTD and Innovation consultancy firm working across Europe on these fields since 1986.

F6S is a European based entity that has become the largest Startup/SME community globally with over 1.3 million Startups/SMEs and 1.7 million entrepreneurs. F6S delivers more than €2 billions every year to Startups and SMEs with the leading CRM for deal flow, corporate challenges, structured programs, startup services, corporate partnering, recruiting, government grants and free startup resources.

Cap Digital is the French business cluster for digital and ecological transformation in the Paris Region, the first digital innovation ecosystem and the largest cluster in Europe. Created in 2006 as a non-profit organisation, Cap Digital has been awarded as a Gold-labelled cluster by ESCA since 2014 and NGI National Contact Point. It counts more than 1000 members: 850+ start-up and innovative SMEs, 70+ major corporations, 80+ institutions of higher education and 14 capital investors. It focuses on 6 markets: Cultural and Creative Industries, Education/HR/Training, Health/Well-being, Technologies/Data/Artificial Intelligence, Sustainable City, Industries & Services.

IMT STARTER is part of Institut Mines Télécom (IMT). The Telecom SudParis and Institut Mines Telecom Business School business Incubator IMT STARTER is a structure that encourages the emergence of young ICT companies with excellent innovation, development and job creation potential.
The Incubator draws on the skills of Telecom SudParis, Institut Mines Telecom Business School and ENSIIE, as well as on the expertise provided by sponsors and partners. The Incubator combines business aspects via the support of expert entrepreneurs (who are both managers and technology specialists) and technological aspects with the support of the campus laboratories. As each new project is to some extent a gamble for the Incubator, the selection process is rigorous, with the services offered being adapted to the candidate’s requirements and created using specialist advice. The Incubator and its partners are seeking to establish a long-term relationship with value-creating start-ups in a win-win perspective. Founded in 1999, the Incubator has accompanied 200 IT companies that have created more than 200 jobs.

The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, with its 72 institutes, 25,000 employees and 2.3 Billion Euro annual research budget, is one of the leading organisations for applied research world-wide. The Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS, based near Bonn, is one of the most renowned artificial intelligence and data science research institutions, with an extremely strong track record in data mining, machine learning, semantic technology and information retrieval research, and its applications to big data analytics, enterprise information integration and media analytics, supported by professional software engineering and project management.

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. is the head company of the ENGINEERING Group. Engineering was founded in 1980, and it is currently the first IT group in Italy, among the top 10 IT groups in Europe. It has 10300 employees and 50 branch offices in Italy and abroad, with an established presence in Belgium, Spain, Germany, Republic of Serbia, South America (Brazil and Argentina) and United States. The group produces IT innovation to more than 1.000 large clients, with a complete offer combining system and business integration, outsourcing, cloud services, consulting, and proprietary solutions. Engineering Data Centres offer business continuity and IT infrastructure management to about 21.000 servers and 230.000 workstations. In 2017, consolidated revenues were more than 1 billion euro.

Advisory Board

The DAPSI Advisory Board is a valued group of experts who will meet regularly with the DAPSI consortium throughout the project. They will provide strategic, technical, ethical and legal guidance, input and feedback on the DAPSI technology roadmap, advise on links with relevant interest groups outside DAPSI, propose and encourage the potential interactions of the project with other projects, initiatives and activities.

DAPSI Advisory Board Members: