EOSC-ENTRUST: A European Network of TRUSTed research environments

The mission of EOSC-ENTRUST is to create a European network of trusted research environments for sensitive data and to drive European interoperability by joint development of a common blueprint for federated data access and analysis. Countries and institutions have made significant investments in secure and trusted data environments to meet the need for research and policy-driven analysis of sensitive datasets such as people's health and socio-economic status, the habitats of vulnerable species and geo-spatial locations of protected sites. There are now a large number of such secure environments in operation - linked to national centres, individual organisations or specific research communities. This fragmented landscape poses challenges for both users and providers: researchers are faced with a large number of different systems and access procedures; providers need to manage federated access across multiple, potentially incompatible, technology and governance frameworks. EOSC-ENTRUST brings together providers of operational Trusted Research Environments from 15 European countries with a shared goal to implement, validate and promote their capabilities through a common European framework using shared standards and common legal, operational and technical language. This blueprint for interoperability is anchored in the EOSC Interoperability Framework spanning the four dimensions of Legal, Organisational, Technical and Semantic interoperability. EOSC-ENTRUST has identified four driver projects covering Genomics, Clinical trials, Social science, and public-private partnerships to benchmark capabilities, inform blueprint design and demonstrate secure data analysis using federated workflows. Targeted outreach activities will expand this open network with further providers and develop policy papers and guidelines for the full range of stakeholders to create a long-term operational TRE framework within the European Open Science Cloud.