Access to the right data is a cornerstone of digitisation for any modern organisation. As we enter the age of AI, data is becoming an even more important asset that needs to be carefully curated and managed to enable the significant benefits such technologies may bring.

Data sharing enables data to be unlocked from system and organisational silos so it can flow to the right people, places and digital services and empower them with better decision-making.

In recent years, cities and local authorities have progressed from sharing data internally across departments to sharing city data on open data portals with the public.

Data that is useful for a city can also come from other stakeholders such as other public sector organisations, private sector partners or citizens. These stakeholders can equally benefit from data provided by the city.

Accessing more (commercially) sensitive data requires a more nuanced approach to data sharing, where data use and licenses are tailored to specific data users and the envisioned use of the data. Data providers can offer their data for free or value exchange, the latter of which poses additional requirements for service-level agreements related to data exchange.

As cities expand their sphere of data use and collaboration from internal to external data providers and users, they establish a local data ecosystem that becomes more complex to manage and maintain.

Digital platforms and tools are emerging to enable the sharing and exchange of data among diverse stakeholders who may provide data to others, consume others’ data, or engage in both.

Initially referred to as data marketplaces, such centralised platforms can provide a trusted environment for data exchange that efficiently facilitates discovery across diverse data providers, negotiation of access to data, and support of bespoke data sharing agreements and monetary transactions for such data.

The original MIM3 working group, “Contracts,”  highlighted relevant capabilities and specifications to enable such data marketplaces for cities. However, the working group remained inactive primarily due to a lack of community demand for data marketplaces.

Recent developments in Europe have emphasised the emergence of more decentralised environments for data sharing and exchange, called data spaces, driven by new legislation such as the European Data Act and policy ambitions to create harmonised EU-wide data markets.

Initiatives such as Data Spaces for Sustainable Smart Cities and Communities (DSS4SSCC) provide fresh impetus for cities and regions to establish interoperable lo and share and exchange data.

With the growing momentum on data exchange as part of local data ecosystems, we are restarting the working group MIM3 under the revised name “Exchanging Data”.

We aim to review more complex data-sharing use cases of emerging data ecosystems that the OASC cities and communities are building and update the MIM3 specifications, bringing them in line with data space development and the new realities of local data-sharing ecosystems on the ground.

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