FAQ

AMdEX accelerates the transition to a fair data economy by giving data owners and data users control over their data. This way, AMdEX enables data based innovations. Such as new treatment methods by sharing medical data or developing sustainable solutions for urban transport.

To achieve this, we co-design and co-develop a neutral and independent infrastructure for trusted data sharing. Neutral because all data is treated equally, there is no discrimination based on user, content or application. Independent because the infrastructure is not in the hands of one party. This enables us to reliably share data.

AMdEX is a collaboration between AMS-IX, UvA, SURF, deXes and Amsterdam Economic Board and co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund. Together they will develop the technology and organization to make this possible over the next 2.5 years . The goal is to establish a not-for-profit organization that ensures continued development in the long term.

Many organizations are willing to share data, but hesitate to do so because they have no control over what happens to it.

It is possible to copy or use data for other purposes without the owner’s permission. Sharing data across organizational boundaries is therefore often so cumbersome and expensive that often no data is shared at all. This means we’re missing great opportunities, as combining data from different sources potentially leads to new insights, products and/or services.

AMdEX ensures that data can be shared in a controlled, reliable and secure manner under the owner’s conditions without the intervention of a third party. Data owners determine and control who is allowed to use which data, with which algorithms and for what purpose.

In the current digital economy data acts as a raw material for innovation and that is a great incentive for organizations to access, share and use their data. However, there are also barriers for organizations to share data or have it processed by an external party. Uncertainty about security, privacy and ownership of data makes data sharing expensive and legally complicated. As a result, many organizations do not share data.

AMdEX solves this problem by developing, testing and ultimately providing standardized and secure data sharing templates that run on a neutral digital infrastructure that is not owned by a few parties, but functions as a public facility.

Technology providers can leverage these templates and infrastructure in their services and products to customers. And because AMdEX is language and operating system independent, users remain free to choose their own IT infrastructure, development platform or programming model.

The management of the infrastructure and templates will be in the hands of an association, members determine how this will be further developed.

In various usecases we show how AMdEX works in practice.

For example, the new generation of smart mobility solutions require advanced systems that use data fusion and algorithms to predict crowds at public transport nodes. However, these types of algorithms require many current and historical data sources that are often unavailable because one-off and often bilateral solutions are too expensive.

The AMdEX infrastructure ensures that providers of public transport data can use existing technology to exchange their data and do not have to develop their own infrastructure. Which saves time and money. Mobility data owners and data users collectively make agreements in data markets about which data may be shared, with whom and under what conditions.

Technology parties supporting these data markets can then choose to use the AMdEX infrastructure to digitally record and execute those agreements, so that it can guarantee that the data owners keep control over their data .

AMdEX is based on a federated structure, which means that it ensures controlled access to each other’s data. It does not store data centrally, and thus prevents undesirable data accumulation with a third party as a condition for sharing data.

Compared to bilateral or sector-specific data sharing agreements, AMdEX is cheaper and faster because data owners do not have to develop their own technology and can make use of existing infrastructure. This allows them to focus on innovation and not on infrastructure management.

Finally, AMdEX makes innovation possible through cross-sectoral data sharing, which means that data from different backgrounds is accessible and can be combined, which is essential for innovation.

AMdEX is a collaboration between the following public and private organizations: AMS-IX, UvA, SURF, deXes and Amsterdam Economic Board.

AMS-IX is responsible for project management, construction of the AMdEX infrastructure in collaboration with SURF & consolidation into a new association. The UvA will primarily focus on the design of a reference architecture and, together with SURF, the development of a research data exchange, deXes develops and tests the service architecture to connect to the AMdEX as an external supplier and the Amsterdam Economic Board is responsible for community management and identifying test cases.

AMdEX is a fieldlab and open for new partners that are willing to invest time and budget to make it a reality.

The AMdEX project was realized with funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), which covers half of the partners’ investments. This pays for the costs of thinking through, testing and developing the required technology and organization. Afterwards the project will have to continue to exist as an independent association.

AMdEX development is an iterative process. By developing use cases, knowledge is gained about the functionalities. After 2,5 years, there is a generic AMdEX with limited functionality (MVP) that offers a unique contribution to the great European ambitions in this field. The development of AMdEX is accompanied by targeted marketing to mobilize multiple users for data sharing, and with investment and subsidy proposals for the further development and scaling up to an independent AMdEX organization.

AMdEX is still in the early development phase. So participating mainly means helping to build. There are several reasons for doing this. AMdEX increases the possibilities of drawing on national and European research funds, strengthens the (international) identity and explores new business models. In addition, organizations that have their own cases as ‘early adopters’ will benefit from direct involvement in AMdEX development.

AMdEX is primarily intended for data owners who want to share data and the technology suppliers that make this possible. AMdEX fills in a piece of the data puzzle by ensuring that agreements that are made are enforced digitally. Together, the data owners and technology suppliers decide whether they want to use AMdEX.

AMdEX is not limited to Amsterdam, but aspires an (inter)national function. The development is fully committed to cooperation with the national government and the European Commission. We foresee a global network of similar data exchange.

AMdEX is not a standalone project. Project partners are involved in many other initiatives and developments. AMdEX works together with the Dutch Data Sharing coalition and wants to integrate the generic agreement system for cross-sectoral data sharing that is developed in this coalition. In addition, AMdEX fits in with the ambition of the NL AI Coalition because it offers a strategic, neutral interpretation of the need for a generic data sharing infrastructure. With regard to GAIA-X, which is intended to offer an alternative to the European dependence on the large (American and Chinese) tech providers, AMdEX is an example of the Dutch strength to innovate with a great diversity of independent collaborating parties.