First Plenary Session of the Gaia-X Hub France
January 22nd, 2021
On Friday, January 22, 2021, the French GAIA-X Hub, supported by Cigref, the Academy of Technologies, the Systematic Competitiveness Cluster, the Directorate General for Enterprises, and the GAIA-X Association, organized its first online plenary session. Bringing together about twenty speakers and nearly 1,000 participants in the morning, the plenary aimed to raise awareness of GAIA-X’s contributions to organizations, increase the involvement of French companies, clarify the missions and ambitions of the French GAIA-X Hub, outline its schedule, and report on the work already undertaken within the Hub.
A Strong Signal Sent to the Ecosystem
“We are facing a historic opportunity for Europe,” emphasized Cédric O, Secretary of State for Digital Transition and Electronic Communications, in his introduction to the plenary session. Indeed, this first meeting of the Hub officially launched the French side of the GAIA-X initiative, in the presence of Hubert Tardieu, interim CEO of the GAIA-X Association. With nearly 1,000 people connected throughout the morning, the event attracted the interest of the digital ecosystem and demonstrated the convergence of messages from the State, the European Commission, and GAIA-X on the goal of creating a performant, competitive, secure, and trustworthy cloud services framework that is technically and legally reliable, supporting a data strategy that respects European values.
The French Hub in Service of the GAIA-X Association
This plenary was also an opportunity for the French GAIA-X Hub to clarify its ambitions and missions: to promote the GAIA-X Association, to show what it can offer to European companies in terms of data sharing, exchange, and cloud services, and to stimulate co-innovation to enhance data sharing in a secure and trustworthy environment, thus expanding the European offering in this area.
Collective Intelligence Serving Data Spaces
National Hubs will be responsible for developing data spaces with sectoral working groups to meet the needs of European companies by creating use cases. These use cases will benefit from the prospective work organized by the Hub to anticipate cloud evolutions. The plenary was an opportunity to report on the work undertaken and to present the most advanced data spaces in France (Mobility, Space, Health, Green Deal, Aerospace Industry, Agriculture, Finance & Insurance, etc.).
GAIA-X, a European Project for Europeans
Bernard Duverneuil, President of Cigref, reminded us, “We want to build this dynamic for the benefit of Europe, for its economy, and for Europeans.” Gérard Roucairol, Honorary President of the Academy of Technologies, emphasized, “The European continent will be the first to have organized the free flow of data in a secure space for the benefit of its economy and its citizens among all public and private stakeholders.”
A Call to Contribute to Sectoral Working Groups
A number of companies, associations, academies, and public administrations have already shown their commitment by joining various sectoral working groups, demonstrating their strong interest in valuing data within a secure, transparent, and trustworthy European framework during the various presentations of data spaces. The French GAIA-X Hub invites all interested parties to join this dynamic and contribute to the work by sending an email to: frenchgaiaxhub@cigref.fr.
