Key Details
The OECD’s Data Spaces between Co-ordination Challenges, Financial Viability and Public Policy asks when a shared data network is worth building — and what keeps it operating once initial funding ends.
Limited operational progress: Of 235 initiatives listed in the International Data Spaces Association’s registry in February 2026, 25 were operational. None was recorded at the subsequent “scaling” stage in the dataset analysed.
Scope of the figures: The registry is voluntary and predominantly European. It does not provide a global count of all comparable data-sharing systems; India’s framework is not included in the 235.
Public funding: European public investment in data-space initiatives exceeded an estimated €1.7 billion by 2025. That figure and the registry count describe different evidence sets.
India’s example: The OECD identifies the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) and its financial-sector Account Aggregator (AA) implementation as a functionally comparable approach. The paper cites more than 270 million linked accounts, not 270 million individual users.
Policy choices: The paper favours funding common standards separately from individual networks, reducing the cost of joining them, and testing whether participants receive enough value to sustain operations.
Shared Infrastructure Has Not Guaranteed Participation
A data space lets organisations exchange data under common technical rules and agreed conditions without placing everything in one central repository. It can be useful where competitors or public bodies need to share information continuously but cannot hand control to a single commercial platform.
Building that infrastructure is only the first step. Each participant must also spend money and effort connecting its systems, often before enough others have joined to make the exchange valuable. The OECD calls this the bootstrapping problem. It helps explain why substantial investment has produced many projects but relatively few operating networks.
The 25-of-235 finding is a warning about the initiatives recorded in the registry, not proof that every data-sharing model worldwide is failing. Project stages are self-reported, and the registry has limited coverage outside Europe.
A Useful Network Starts with a Problem Participants Will Pay to Solve
The paper contrasts projects built around a demonstrable use with those whose expected value remained uncertain. Finland’s maritime data-sharing system began with a practical shipping and port-coordination use case that could reduce costs for participants. France’s agricultural Agdatahub, by contrast, declared bankruptcy in 2024 after grant funding ended and participation did not sustain the service.
The lesson is not that data must be sold to make a network viable. Cost sharing, membership fees and useful servicesmay fit systems whose value lies in better coordination. The OECD also argues that governments should first ask whether a problem genuinely needs a multi-party network; simpler bilateral exchange or an existing platform may suffice in other cases.
India Puts Individual Consent at the Centre
India’s DEPA takes a different governance approach. In financial services, RBI-regulated Account Aggregators enable a person to authorise the transfer of their information between financial institutions through a standardised consent process. Intermediaries can earn fees for facilitating that exchange, offering a possible operating model that does not depend on grants alone.
The OECD draws a distinction: many European data spaces emphasise control by the organisation providing data, while DEPA centres control by the individual whose data are shared. India’s experience therefore offers a design lesson, not a claim that the same model can be copied unchanged into industrial or other forms of data exchange. The paper also notes the role of RBI regulation and industry coordination in the AA framework’s adoption.
What Is a Data Space?
A data space is a set of common rules and technical connections through which multiple organisations can find and exchange data while retaining control over their own systems. Its value is greatest when sharing must continue across several parties and trust cannot rest with one platform operator.
Policy Relevance
For India, the OECD paper sharpens the question for any proposed expansion of governed data sharing: who needs to exchange what information, why will each party join, and how will the service be sustained? DEPA shows how regulated intermediaries can support participation in financial data sharing, but its consent model answers a particular need involving personal information.
Common standards can be valuable across many uses; a new sector-specific network needs a separate case for demand and operating costs. Demand for reliable, specialised data for AI may strengthen that case in some sectors, although the paper says its ability to sustain data spaces remains unproven. Measuring actual data flows, participation and benefits — not just projects funded or connections built — would make those choices easier to judge.
Follow the Full Paper Here: Data Spaces between Co-ordination Challenges, Financial Viability and Public Policy