Autor: Kai Lindow

The topic of Openness is of growing importance for industry, especially in Europe. However, the term Openness is used very differently. Openness includes several concepts, including Open Source Hardware, Open Source Software, Open Data, Open Standards, Open Innovation, Open Science and Open Education. The concepts address different dimensions of Openness, all based on some kind of participation and with the goal to create more transparency and accessibility. This article defines the concepts and provides a basic understanding of their importance for industry and for greater sustainability.

How can organisations successfully participate in interoperable and decentralised data ecosystems? To answer this question, this paper presents a process model using the transport logistics industry as an example, which methodically describes the collaborative and interdisciplinary development of services in the decentralised federated data ecosystem Gaia-X [6]. The model supports evaluation and decision-making processes within the development of decentralised data ecosystems in practice and helps IT decision-makers and participating stakeholders to identify the relevant communication flows in a use case. It can be used independently for specific use cases, data spaces and connector technologies and ensures that the communication and alignment of individual development statuses in a decentrally organised framework is comprehensible and understandable for the overall context.