The European Union makes these tools available to local businesses for the management and re-use of large volumes of open data.

When it comes to innovating in digital transformation, Spanish SMEs seem to encounter insurmountable barriers to entry. The belief has been installed that this process has high costs. Mainly because it is expensive to hire a specialist in these matters. But the European Union has taken an important step for this business sector to overcome the digital divide.

There are countless issues that every entrepreneur has to solve. For example, allocating resources or distributing information logistics efficiently; defining the right energy and environmental model or expectations about a market; or even adapting to new customer interaction models. Many of the answers to these challenges are in the data. 

For this reason, the EU has made available to any user an immeasurable volume of data relevant to business management. At the same time, thanks to the Open Data Directive (2019), actions are being implemented to enrich this repository. In other words, there is data, but you have to know how to manage it. In other words, data analytics and AI are the way to incorporate them IN the task of innovating.

In this regard, the EU has funded projects that make Big Data and Artificial Intelligence hub services available to local SMEs and industry.

One of the organisations leading this commissioned work is EUHubs4Data. It is a project managed in Valencia by the Instituto Tecnológico de Informática (ITI). Its mission is to form a federation of Big Data Innovation Hubs, i.e. innovation hubs with Big Data. Twelve countries, including Spain, are participating in this initiative. Today, the federation is made up of 21 members.

Each of them, or hub, must facilitate access to European Big Data and Artificial Intelligence services for SMEs and local industries. To this end, it carries out two relevant tasks. The first is the systematisation of European Open Data. This work makes it possible to rationalise its use and adapt it to the needs of each organisation.

The second is to verify that the legal and ethical conditions for the use of the data are met. This provides legal certainty in the use of the data to the entrepreneur and, in this case, to ITI.

In short, the European Big Data and Artificial Intelligence hubs are an investment in the construction of a European business model that is committed to digital transformation while guaranteeing rights.

More information in the column by Professor Ricard Martínez M., Director of the Privacy and Digital Transformation Chair Microsoft-UV, “AI for SMEs” published in the May edition of Tecnología y Sentido Común.

The European Digital Innovation Hubs

European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs) function as one-stop-shops that help companies to respond dynamically to digital challenges and become more competitive. Like any hub, they are spaces where different related actors interact in order to generate synergies that help to bring, for example, a start-up to fruition.