The MyData Operator Award recognises personal data companies that have shown leadership by empowering individuals to control their personal data. As promoted by the European Commission, putting people in the centre of digital transformations is needed for a safe and sustainable digital future. Further, boosting data sharing and ensuring its trustworthiness is critical to reaping the benefits of our digitised lives. Organisations awarded with the MyData Operator Award are vital enablers for such a vision, providing value for companies and individuals alike.

The Data Act proposal defines the rules for sharing data, conditions for access by public bodies, international data transfers, cloud switching and interoperability, according to a leaked draft.

If the exchange of health status is to become a requirement for reopening our economies and borders, then members of the Good Health Pass Collaborative (GHPC) believe it is our responsibility to ensure that the technical ecosystem works for everyone: individuals, organizations, and governments. This is version 1.0 of GHP Interoperability Blueprint by the Interoperability Working Group.

Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability – the FAIR principles – intend to define a minimal set of related but independent and separable guiding principles and practices that enable both machines and humans to find, access, interoperate and re-use data and metadata. The FAIR principles were defined in 2016 in an article by Mark Wilkinson et. al. The principles have to be considered as inspiring concepts but not strict rules. This means that they may lead to diverse interpretations and ambiguity.

To remedy the proliferation of FAIRness measurements based on different interpretations of the principles, the RDA Working Group “FAIR data maturity model” established in January 2019 aims to develop a common set of core assessment criteria for FAIRness, as an RDA Recommendation. In the course of 2019 and the first half of 2020, the WG established a set of indicators and maturity levels for those indicators. As a result of the work, a first set of guidelines and a checklist related to the implementation of the indicators were produced, with the objective to further align the guidelines for evaluating FAIRness with the needs of the community.

The problems of corporate concentration and privacy on the Internet are inextricably linked. A new regime of interoperability can revitalize competition in the space, encourage innovation, and give users more agency over their data; it may also create new risks to user privacy and data security. This paper considers those risks and argues that they are outweighed by the benefits. New interoperability, done correctly, will not just foster competition, it can be a net benefit for user privacy rights.

The OIX Interoperability Guide provides ‘how to’ guidance for anyone interested in assessing how different identity ecosystems interact. It sets out a clear, adaptable approach to assessing interoperability of identity proofing and authentication carried out in different regional or national trust frameworks.

True interoperability in Decentrailized Identifier?
Sam Smith presents KERI as an important breakthrough for verifiable data inputs, bringing with it the promise of one DID method for all signed inputs in a digital network.

The first paper in this series focused on policy issues. This second paper looks at the technical details and requirements of interoperability in practice. The third paper will analyse the impact of interoperability on phenomena such as disinformation and privacy.

OCA is a standardised global solution for data capture, providing a positive alternative to current architectures. Primarily devised for data object interoperability and privacy compliant data sharing, OCA promises to significantly enhance the ability to pool data more effectively in terms of simplicity, accuracy, and allocation of resources.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has finalized two long-awaited sets of rules that will govern how providers, payers and technology vendors must design their systems to give patients safe and secure access to their digital health data.

I'd like to publicly announce a new initiative that was initially started at the MyData 2019 conference: Common Endpoints for Personal data Stores (CEPS). Together with @salmanff and @Dixon we created a document for Personal Data Store (PDS) providers and App developers that will allow interoperability between PDS and using Apps across different PDS.