13.1. Analysis of two DSGAs: Catena-X and Prometheus-X

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Examples: We looked on examples of the existing Data Spaces CATENA-X and Prometheus-X to illustrate the governance and financing models of the Data Spaces.  

CATENA-X  #

 
Description  Catena-X is an Automotive Network. Catena-X sees itself as a rapidly scalable ecosystem in which all participants in the automotive value chain participate equally. 
Goal  The goal is to provide an environment for the creation, operation and collaborative use of end-to-end data chains along the entire automotive value chain.  
Organisation type  Association (Germany) 
Members  The members are made up of providers and users in the automotive value chain and cover a wide range of company sizes with special focus on the integration of small and medium-sized enterprises. 
Activities  Catena-X works as an association and is complemented by a development area, where the actual development work is done regarding standardization, certification, and governance. In addition to the development work at the core of Catena-X, members work together in cooperations, consortia or projects outside the association and take on various development tasks. 
Operating model  The Catena-X Operating Model is organized in a decentralized way: they leave operations in the hands of many instead of a few providers to ensure fair competition, innovation, and better business conditions for all participants of the data space use case. They also want to replace services that are initially provided centrally with decentralized and federated operating concepts. 
Funding  The Association receives public funding – The Catena-X consortium is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy’s. 

 

Prometheus-X  #

 
Description  Prometheus-X is developing building blocks to enable human-centric, ethical and trustworthy exchange of data with first applications in the sector of Education and Skills. The exchange of data among organisations in Europe has been very limited.  
Goal  Prometheus-X objective is to fund the development of the building blocks required for building the first European Data Space of Education and Skills (DASES). 
Organisation type  Association (France) 
Members  Public and private organisations, like university, publisher, and IT companies. 
Activities  Prometheus-X does not operate a data space itself but rather provides the building blocks needed to operate a data space and ensures these building blocks are aligned with the data space and skills / education community and standards. 
Operating model  The work in Prometheus-X is divided among several working groups called Assemblies. An Assembly is a group of members who meet periodically to make decisions about a specific area or topic. There are two types of Assemblies: DASES Working Groups and Prometheus-X General Assembly. The Prometheus-X General Assembly serves as a Governance authority and holds meetings to vote governance rules and also to vote on proposals for funding the new common services identified within working groups.  

 

Characteristics of The Assembly: 

  • It is made up of all members of the association.  
  • It meets as many times as necessary, and at least each year within six months. 
  • The up-to-date members each have one vote.  
  • Regarding the constitutive ordinary general meeting, each member has one vote. 
  • Meets at least once a year to vote on the financing and development of building blocks of Prometheus-X. 
  • The members can be entrusted with a mandate of representation by any absent member.  
  • Resolutions are taken by a majority of members present or represented. 
  • An extraordinary general meeting can be called in the event of dissolution, extension of the association, modification of the statutes and major and urgent concerns. It is decided by the president or by the request of more than half of the members. 
Funding  Prometheus-X is today funded by public grants to develop the first building blocks. These building blocks are then open sourced and available for any organisation to operate in order to launch a data space.  Prometheus-X envisions a business model where organisations would pay a fee to be able to use the building blocks, these funds will then serve to fund additional building blocks. 

The Prometheus-X business model is based on royalties of the digital commons used by the participants of the dataspace. In practical terms, dataspace participants using PTX digital commons will pay Prometheus-x a variable fee based on the consumption of those services. 

Prometheus-X digital commons can be used in three ways: 

  • Fully managed service: As building blocks embedded in a fully managed service (e.g., SAAS) operated by any organisations. 
  • Multi cloud package: As building blocks embedded in a self-managed Infrastructure as code package, ready to be deployed on multiple cloud providers. 
  • FOSS service: As raw building blocks used in free and open-source software. 

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