EOSC-ENTRUST: A European Network of TRUSTed research environments

About the EOSC ENTRUST Project

The mission of EOSC-ENTRUST is to create a European network of trusted research environments for sensitive data and to drive European interoperability by joint development of a common blueprint for federated data access and analysis.

Countries and institutions have made significant investments in secure and trusted data environments to meet the need for research and policy-driven analysis of sensitive datasets such as people’s health and socio-economic status, the habitats of vulnerable species and geo-spatial locations of protected sites. There are now many such secure environments in operation, linked to national centres, individual organisations or specific research communities. This fragmented landscape poses challenges for both users and providers. Researchers are faced with a large number of different systems and access procedures, while providers need to manage federated access across multiple, potentially incompatible, technology and governance frameworks.

EOSC-ENTRUST brings together providers of operational Trusted Research Environments (TREs) from 15 European countries with a shared goal to implement, validate and promote their capabilities through a common European framework using shared standards and common legal, operational and technical language. This blueprint for interoperability is anchored in the EOSC Interoperability Framework spanning the four dimensions of Legal, Organisational, Technical and Semantic interoperability. EOSC-ENTRUST has identified four driver projects covering genomics, clinical trials, social science and public-private partnerships to benchmark capabilities, inform blueprint design and demonstrate secure data analysis using federated workflows.

Targeted outreach activities will expand this open network with further providers and develop policy papers and guidelines for the full range of stakeholders to create a long-term operational TRE framework within the European Open Science Cloud.

Project duration

1 March 2024 – 28 February 2027

UK Data Service involvement in ‘Driver 2: Common standards to enable trans-national sharing of administrative/register and social science data’

Challenge: In many countries, data sharing in the social sciences is carried out in national data centres of excellence with mature TREs. Those TREs develop standards for interoperability to enable collaborative work using multiple TRE capabilities. However, these efforts face obstacles such as

• Common terminology: Many countries have developed their own administrative and social science database environments, which reflect the characteristics of data management in that country. To make these different approaches comparable, a set of definitions should be established.
• Legislative and governance challenges: Harmonisation of the differences arising from the legal environment and the conditions of use allowed by the data owner and regulations set by the institutional systems of public and private organisations.

Driver approach: The Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) and affiliated national entities will provide their TRE capabilities and expertise to inform specifications (legal, operational and technical) and to identify and promote common standards to enable sensitive data sharing. A solid foundation has been laid by past and present trans-national projects such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud (WP5 of SSHOC), the International Data Access Network (IDAN) and the International Secure Data Facility Professionals Network (ISDFPN). Collectively, these projects developed a framework for implementing trans-national data sharing agreements and enabled new remote access connections. The aim is now to expand and test the framework with a new secure data service and look at how it can be extended to cross-domain data sharing and the sharing of novel forms of data, such as digital behavioural data or qualitative data.

Expected impact:

• CESSDA as an organisation will move towards the provision of greater interoperability in social science resources, allowing collaborative projects at an international scale and at cross-domain level.
• The International Secure Data Facility Professionals Network, set up under the Social Science and Humanities Open Cloud and now jointly run by the UK Data Service and GESIS, will be able to provide improved expert and sustainable support for data professionals working in Trusted Research Environments by providing additional resources. Further, this network, which enables international dissemination of critical data sharing skills and knowledge, will be enabled to realise its aim to expand further.

Project partners for Driver 2

• CESSDA: Panagiota Starida and Alen Vodopijevec
• GESIS (Germany): Deborah Wiltshire (Driver 2 Lead) and Elizabeth Bishop
• TARKI (Hungary): Peter Hegedus
• UKDS (United Kingdom): Sharon Bolton and Beate Lichtwardt

EOSC-ENTRUST funding and coordination

• Horizon Europe Programmes: HORIZON 1.3 – Research Infrastructures; HORIZON 1.3.1 – Consolidating and Developing the Landscape of European
  Research Infrastructures Scheme; HORIZON-RIA – HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
• EU contribution: € 4,218,809.75
• Coordinated by: European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Germany

EOSC-ENTRUST participating organisations