Workshop series on data spaces within Brazilian-German Digital Dialogue

The first two workshops were oriented towards the private sector and were focused on the implementation of data spaces in Brazil. The third workshop took place within the framework of the third Annual Meeting of the Brazilian-German Digital Dialogue.  Representatives from business, academia and civil society shared their diverse perspectives on data spaces.

Workshops on strategies for implementing data spaces

On 9 August, the first workshop was hosted at Tecnopuc, a science and technology centre at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre. More than 30 experts participated in lively discussions. On the following day, the second workshop took place on the premises of the Brazilian Association of Machinery and Equipment Industry (ABIMAQ) in São Paulo, bringing together over 20 experts from both the private and public sector.

In both workshops, the European initiative Gaia-X served as a case study for the implementation of data spaces in Brazil. The participants used the initial findings of Gaia-X to create new data space strategies. They agreed that it is important to customise the approaches based on Brazil’s unique characteristics, but also to balance between customisation and a globally oriented architecture to enable international integration.

Lastly, the experts emphasised the importance of partnerships between policymakers and businesses to establish a secure and unified data infrastructure in Brazil.

Workshop on industrial data spaces for sovereignty and competitiveness

The Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) and the German Ministry of Digital and Transport (BMDV) jointly hosted the third workshop on 14 September. It took place on the premises of the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI) in Brasília. Stakeholders from Brazil and Germany engaged in a discussion on how data spaces can promote sovereignty and competitiveness.

High-level government representatives attended the workshop, including Stefan Schnorr, State Secretary at BMDV, Henrique Miguel, Secretary for Digital Transformation of MCTI, and Ernst Stöckl-Pukall, Head of Division Digitalisation and Industry 4.0 of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). The president of ABDI, Cecilia Vergara, as well as representatives from the Brazilian National Data Protection Authority (ANDP) and the Brazilian Ministry of Innovation and Management in Public Services (MGI) also participated in the dialogue.

During the discussion, the speakers highlighted the importance of implementing data spaces in Brazil and connecting them to German and European initiatives. They agreed that collaboration between the public and private sector is essential for the successful implementation, as it relies partly on companies building the data ecosystem.

Joint initiative for implementing data spaces in Brazil and Germany

The workshops were part of the broader initiative “Data Spaces in Brazil”, a collaboration between ABDI, ABIMAQ, the Brazilian Association of Electrical and Electronic Industry (ABINEE) and the Centre of Organisational Engineering (NEO). In cooperation with this initiative, the Secretariat for the Brazilian-German Digital Dialogue co-facilitated a green paper on data spaces.