Secretariat for the Alliance on industrial data, cloud and edge

Topic description

ExpectedOutcome:

Outcome and Deliverables

The Secretariat of the European Alliance should support the European Commission in delivering on the following outcomes:

• A platform for leveraging investment synergies across the EU and Member States in the research, development and deployment of next generation of resource-efficient, interoperable, highly secure and trusted EU cloud and edge technologies, in coordination with other relevant EU investment initiatives.
• A matchmaking platform for businesses on investments in next-generation data processing capacities addressing the needs for processing sensitive personal or highly sensitive public sector and business data.
• A consultation platform in the context of the preparatory work of the EU cloud Rulebook, including expertise on common technical rules and norms for cloud services operating on the EU market.
• A c platform to create synergies with common European data spaces, in particular those hosting sensitive personal, or highly sensitive public sector and business data requiring high security requirements, in close coordination with the Data Space Support Centre and the European Data Innovation Board.

This action is set to support the activities of the Alliance on industrial data, cloud and edge that was announced in the Communication on “Updating the 2020 New Industrial Strategy" ( COM(2021) 350 final).The purpose of the Alliance is to gather relevant stakeholders, including industry, Member States representatives and other experts, from across Europe in view of strengthening Europe’s industrial capacities in disruptive cloud and edge technologies. The activities of the Alliance will contribute to the EU’s digital targets for 2030, including the establishment of climate-neutral, highly resource and energy-efficient, sustainable data centres; the deployment of 10,000 climate-neutral highly secure edge nodes across the EU; and raising the percentage of European enterprises using advanced cloud computing services in Europe to 75%. The Alliance will focus on fostering the joint development and deployment of next-generation EU native cloud and edge technologies that meet the requirements to process Europe’s sensitive personal and/or highly sensitive business and public sector data sets, by addressing use cases for all sectors of the economy, with a specific focus on defence, security, mobility, health, and space. In carrying out its tasks, the Alliance should seek to foster and create synergies with other relevant EU initiatives.

The main tasks of the Alliance will include: leverage investment synergies across EU and Member States in the area of cloud and edge, such as Horizon Europe, Digital Europe Programme, Connecting Europe Facility 2, European Defence Fund and the Recovery and Resilience Facility; coordination with common European data spaces and the Data Spaces Support Centre (see topic 2.2.2.1); structured cooperation between the Commission and all Member States’s public authorities, including on common specifications for public procurement of cloud services; expertise on relevant technical and self-regulatory norms for cloud services. This action consists in providing the following support services to the Alliance:

• Supporting the day-to-day industry-led operational work of the Alliance, including through (i) the setup and management of a collaborative workspace among participants and (ii) the organisation of relevant thematic working groups in view of ensuring progress towards and delivering on the Alliance’s milestones.
• Organisation of the annual General Assembly with all members of the Alliance, in close coordination with the European Commission
• Organisation of the annual Alliance Forum with all members of the Alliance and interested stakeholders, in close coordination with the European Commission
• Creation and maintenance of the Alliance’s website and day-to-day content creation to inform the broader audience about the Alliance’s activities.

The Secretariat of the Alliance should ensure the principles of inclusivity and diversity for the activities it is entrusted with, and be itself inclusive and diverse, notably by being gender-balanced.