A series of video interviews with representatives of Federation Services were conducted by GXFS-DE. Each of the GXFS Work Package Heads discusses in detail the components and services of the GXFS Toolbox, which are:
- Identity & Trust
- Federated Catalogue and Self-Description
- Sovereign Data Exchange
- Compliance
- Portal & Integration
What are the individual work packages about?
Work Package No. 1: Identity & Trust
Based on the concept of Self-Sovereign Identity, the “Identity & Trust” service offers the possibility of maintaining control over one’s digital identities and data. This will be provided and secured through:
Work Package No. 2: Federated Catalogue
The “federated catalogue” is a directory of self-descriptions through which providers and service offerings can be easily found and selected. The self-descriptions contain the information that participants provide about themselves and their services in the form of characteristics and self-declarations.
Work Package No. 3: Sovereign Data Exchange
“Sovereign Data Exchange” offer participants the ability to decide how their data is exchanged and shared. This will be provided and secured through:
Work Package No. 4: Compliance
Gaia-X defines a framework for compliance, defined in terms of a code of conduct and expressed through third-party certifications/confirmations or by signing general terms and conditions.
Work Package No. 5: Portal & Integration
The Gaia-X portal serves as an example of an integration layer that introduces federation services and provides user-friendly access to those services. With the orchestration service, the Gaia-X participant, through the portal, can instantiate services from the catalog search results.
Overall
The technical specifications have been drawn up in Spring 2021 and were awarded in an EU-wide tender. Starting in December 2021 the winning bidders are now going to implement the first set of Federation Services, which will create an GXFS open-source reference implementation.
The Gaia-X association maintains a repository of the Federation Services. Anyone can access the open-source code of GXFS and develop services based upon it.
All participants and interested Gaia-X supporters can improve and adapt services developed under the GXFS umbrella to meet the Federations’ needs with this open-source implementation. The following videos provide additional insight into the functionalities and benefits of the Federation Services and illustrate how they could be of benefit to Gaia-X users.