Gaia-X Conceptual Model

The Gaia-X conceptual model, shown in the figure below, describes all concepts in the scope of Gaia-X and relations among them. Supplementary, more detailed models may be created in the future to specify further aspects. Minimum versions of important core concepts in the form of mandatory attributes are presented in Appendix A3. The general interaction pattern is further depicted in section The general interaction pattern is further depicted in section Basic Interactions of Participants.

The Gaia-X core concepts are represented in classes. An entity highlighted in blue shows that an element is part of Gaia-X and therefore described by a Gaia-X Self-Description. The upper part of the model shows different actors of Gaia-X, while the lower part shows elements of commercial trade and the relationship to actors outside Gaia-X.

Gaia-X conceptual model

Participants

A Participant is an entity, as defined in ISO/IEC 24760-1 as “item relevant for the purpose of operation of a domain that has recognizably distinct existence”¹, which is onboarded and has a Gaia-X Self-Description. A Participant can take on one or more of the following roles: Provider, Consumer, Federator. Section Federation Services demonstrates use cases that illustrate how these roles could be filled. Provider and Consumer present the core roles that are in a business-to-business relationship while the Federator enables their interaction.

Provider

A Provider is a Participant who provides Assets and Resources in the Gaia-X Ecosystem. It defines the Service Offering including terms and conditions as well as technical Policies. Furthermore, it provides the Service Instance that includes a Self-Description and associated Policies. Therefore, the Provider operates different Resources and possesses different Assets.

Federator

Federators are in charge of the Federation Services and the Federation which are independent of each other. Federators are Gaia-X Participants. There can be one or more Federators per type of Federation Service.

A Federation refers to a loose set of interacting actors that directly or indirectly consume, produce, or provide Assets and related Resources.

Consumer

A Consumer is a Participant who searches Service Offerings and consumes Service Instances in the Gaia-X Ecosystem to enable digital offerings for End-Users.

Resources and Assets

Resources and Assets describe in general the goods and objects of a Gaia-X Ecosystem and are defined as follows. Resources and Assets compose the Service Offerings.

Assets

An Asset is an element, which does not expose an Endpoint and is used to compose the Service Offering. An Endpoint is defined according to ISO/TR 24097-3:2019(en) as a combination of a binding and a network address². An Asset can be a Data Asset, a Software Asset, a Node or an Interconnection Asset. A set of Policies is bound to each Asset. The different categories of Assets are visualized in Figure 3 and defined below:

 classDiagram
      class Asset{
          class ()
          policies ()
      }
      class Data Asset{
      }
      class Software Asset{
      }
      class Node{
      }
      class Interconnection{
      }
      Asset <|-- Data Asset
      Asset <|-- Software Asset
      Asset <|-- Node
      Asset <|-- Interconnection

A Data Asset is an Asset that consist of data in any form and necessary information for data sharing.

A Node is an Asset and represents a computational or physical entity that hosts, manipulates, or interacts with other computational or physical entities.

A Software Asset is a form of Assets that consist of non-physical functions.

An Interconnection as an Asset presents the connection between two or more Nodes. These Nodes are usually deployed in different infrastructure domains and owned by different stakeholders, such as Consumers and/or Providers. The Interconnection between the Nodes can be seen as a path which exhibits special characteristics, such as latency, bandwidth and security guarantees, that go beyond the characteristics of a path over the public Internet.

Resources

Resources expose an Endpoint and compose a Service Offering. They are bound to certain Policies.

The difference between Resources and Assets can be described as follows: Resources represent those elements necessary to supply Assets. They can be explained as internal Service Instances not available for order. For example, the running instance that provides a data set is a Resource.

Policies

Policy is defined as a statement of objectives, rules, practices, or regulations governing the activities of Participants within Gaia-X. From a technical perspective Policies are statements, rules or assertions that specify the correct or expected behaviour of an entity³⁴.

The Policy Rules Document explains the general Policies defined by the Gaia-X association for all Providers and Service Offerings. They cover, for example, privacy or cybersecurity policies and are expressed in the conceptual model indirectly via Gaia-X Federation Service Compliance and as attributes of the Assets, Resources, Service Offerings, and Service Instances.

These general Policies form the basis for detailed Policies for a particular Service Offering, which can be defined additionally and contain particular restrictions and obligations defined by the respective Provider or Consumer. They occur either as a Provider Policy (alias Usage Policies) or as a Consumer Policy (alias Search Policy):

• A Provider Policy/Usage Policy constraints the Consumer’s use of an Asset or Resource. For example, a Usage Policy for data can constrain the use of the data by allowing to use it only for x times or for y days.

• A Consumer Policy describes a Consumer’s restrictions of a requested Asset or Resource. For example, a Consumer gives the restriction that a Provider of a certain service has to fulfil demands such as being located in a particular jurisdiction or fulfil a certain service level.

In the conceptual model, they appear as attributes in all elements related to Assets and Resources. The specific Policies have to be in line with the general Policies in the Policy Rules Document.

graph TD;
    A[Policy Rules] --> |defines| B[general Gaia-X Policies]
    B --> |basis for| C[Asset/Resource-specific Policies]
    C -->D[Provider Policy/ Usage Policy]
    C -->E[Consumer Policy/ Search Policy]

Federation Services

Federation Services are services required for the operational implementation of a Gaia-X Data Ecosystem. They are explained in greater detail in the Federation Service section.

They comprise four groups of services that are necessary to enable Federation of Assets, Resources, Participants and interactions between Ecosystems. The four service groups are Identity and Trust, Federated Catalogue, Sovereign Data Exchange and Compliance.

Service Offering

A Service Offering is defined as a set of Assets and Resources which a Provider aggregates and publishes as a single entry in a Catalogue. Service Offerings may themselves be aggregated realizing service composition. The instantiation of a Service Offering is the deliverable of a Provider to a Consumer. The Federation Services provide the foundation for Service Offerings and the Service Offering uses and conforms to the Federation Services.

Additional Concepts

In addition to those concepts and their relations mentioned above, further ones exist in the conceptual model that are not directly governed by Gaia-X. These concepts do not need to undergo any procedures directly related to Gaia-X, e.g., do not create or maintain a Gaia-X Self-Description.

First, the Service Instance realizes a Service Offering and can be used by End-Users while relying on a contractual basis.

Second, Contracts are not in scope of Gaia-X but present the legal basis for the Services Instances and include specified Policies. Contract means the binding legal agreement describing a Service Instance and includes all rights and obligations. This comes in addition to the automated digital rights management embedded in every entity’s Self-Description.

Further relevant actors exist outside of the Gaia-X scope in terms of End-Users and Asset Owners.

Asset Owners such as data owners describe a natural or legal person, which holds the rights of an Asset that will be provided according to Gaia-X regulations by a Provider and legally enable its provision. As Assets are bundled into a Service Offering and nested Asset compositions can be possible, there is no separate resource owner either. Assets and resources can only be realized together in a Service Offering and Service Instance by a Provider, which presents no need to model a separate legal holder of ownership rights.

End-Users use digital offerings of a Gaia-X Consumer that are enabled by Gaia-X. The End-User uses the Service Instances containing Self-Description and Policies.

Examples

This example describes the various Gaia-X concepts using the Open Banking scenario of a Personal Finance Management service (PFM) in SaaS mode.

Let’s suppose that the service is proposed by a company called MyPFM to an end user Jane who have bank accounts in 2 banks: Bank_1 and Bank_2. MyPFM is using services provided by Bank_1 and Bank_2 to get the banking transactions of Jane and then aggregates these bank statements to create Jane’s financial dashboard.

Jane is the End-User.

Bank_1 and Bank_2 are Providers defining the Service Offerings delivering the banking transactions and operating the corresponding Service Instances. They are also Asset Owners for the bank statements, which are Assets composing the Service Offerings (Jane is the data subject as per GDPR). The associated Asset Policies are in fact predefined by the PSD2 directive from the European Parliament.

MyPFM is the Consumer which consumes the Service Instances provided by Bank_1 and Bank_2 in order to create a financial dashboard and to offer it to Jane. MyPFM is also likely consuming Service Instances from a PaaS Provider in order to run its own code (dashboard creation).