The challenge

Bulgaria committed to building nine data spaces over five years, as part of an EU-funded programme to bring its data governance into line with the European Strategy for Data. 

A data space lets government, business, researchers and civil society share data while each keeps control of how its data is used. Few Eastern European countries had built one. The Ministry of e-Government needed to know which sectors were ready, and which uses of data would justify the effort. The World Bank, advising the Ministry, asked Oxford Insights to lead this assessment.

Our approach

We started with the evidence from abroad. Working with data space specialists from Fraunhofer ISST, we reviewed how Germany, Austria, Finland, China and the Czech Republic had set up data spaces, and what had made them work.

We then built a framework to judge how ready a sector is for a data space, under three headings: the ecosystem of stakeholders, the supply of data, and the demand for it. We applied it to the nine sectors the government had chosen: agriculture, education, energy, environment, health, regional development, tourism, transport and water. In each sector, we interviewed ministries, businesses and civil society groups; surveyed public officials with the Bulgarian research firm ESTAT; held a roundtable in Sofia with industry, academia and civil society; and reviewed the data already published.

Alongside this, we tested two candidate pilots put forward by the government, in smart cities and in health. We judged each against four tests: a compelling use case, clear value, no legal or cultural barriers, and enough good data ready to flow.

Finally, we scored each candidate data space on its likely impact and on how ready it was to build. From this we recommended a balanced set of nine data spaces and prioritised four for early development.

Our impact

We recommended that Bulgaria’s first pilot focus on air quality and urban heat islands in its cities. We found tourism, transport, agriculture and environment ready for data spaces in the short term, with health, education and regional development to follow. Energy and water need groundwork first. The nine data spaces we recommended ranged from road safety and tourist flows to skills matching and climate adaptation.

Bulgaria has carried this work into national policy. The Ministry of e-Government’s draft Data Management Strategy 2026–2030, published for consultation in April 2026, names nine national data spaces in priority sectors including tourism, transport, environment, health, and education. 

We presented the assessment method with the World Bank at Global Data Spaces Connect in Vienna in November 2024, and the International Data Spaces Association asked to reuse the presentation. The framework can be applied by any government planning data spaces.

Grid image: Sofia seen from the National Palace of Culture, by Sami C (pixelsblue) on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsblue/23612559722/, licensed under CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/