Sandboxing. How to use it to strengthen your local data ecosystem

Data sharing plays a fundamental role in strengthening the European economy. The reuse of data have great potential at local level, as this allows informing and improvement of a range of services that citizens utilise in their lives. Accordingly, different European cities have been investing in data ecosystems as a structural solution for an effective sharing of data among stakeholders, namely public actors, private actors and/or citizens. However, these stakeholders have to deal with organisational and/or technical barriers hampering the development of such ecosystems, and, more extensively, the growth of the entire data economy. Therefore, the need to find effective and sustainable approaches for the use of data is becoming ever more urgent, and innovative practices can constitute a relevant solution. Local authorities, just like other stakeholders, may leverage on testing of technical or organisational mechanisms before adopting – and investing in them. This report aims to be a practical guide to adopt innovative solutions for data sharing at the local level by leveraging on the sandboxing approach. It is conceived as a practical orientation for a wide range of public administrators who are eager to develop, or improve, data ecosystems in their local contexts. By 'sandbox' we refer to an environment that allows to safely experiment with innovative solutions that allows for an agile and inclusive approach to foster hands-on experience for testing new applications or new organisational approaches.