DataPACT Project One-Year Update on Trustworthy, Ethical, and Compliant Data and AI Systems
In an era where data and AI are driving innovation across industries, ensuring that these technologies are trustworthy, ethical, and compliant with legal and environmental standards is more important than ever. The DataPACT project — Compliance by Design of Data/AI Operations and Pipelines — is a major European initiative funded under the Horizon Europe programme that tackles this challenge head‑on.
DataPACT’s Fourth Plenary meeting in Innsbruck
Marking one year of project implementation, the fourth plenary meeting hosted by Innsbruck University represented the perfect opportunity for the consortium to review progress, align ongoing activities, and foster a shared understanding of the project’s overall results across the consortium, beyond individual work packages.
As part of this review, discussions addressed technical aspects, spanning individual tools, the overall modular microservice architecture, and their integration. This allowed partners to assess progress, share lessons learned, and align on next steps for effective deployment of the tools across the seven real-world use cases.
ASSIST Software’s Role: From Integration to Exploitation
For ASSIST, the first year of the project has set the stage for both integration and exploitation, allowing the team to initiate the connection of tools within the modular architecture and to launch structured exploitation and innovation management activities.
Our colleague, Dumitru Cenușa, presented an update on integration progress and showcased the design of the dashboard, which will serve as a central point for visualizing and accessing the outputs generated by the integrated tools — from analytical insights to graphs and reports.
In parallel, as exploitation lead and innovation manager, Cătălin Trufin guided the consortium through the stages of the exploitation plan, highlighting the objectives, planned activities, and expected outcomes of the first stage for the upcoming period. This detailed overview ensured that partners clearly understood the expectations for their contributions to the exploitation of the project results, ensuring a smooth and coordinated implementation of the exploitation activities.
From Technology to Real-World Impact
During the meeting, the project’s seven use cases represented one of the focal points, providing the real-world context for testing and validating the integrated tools. Each use case covers a different sector — media and entertainment, healthcare, smart cities, law enforcement, manufacturing, human resources, and public data management — ensuring the solutions are relevant across industries and contexts.
Discussions also highlighted ethical, social, and legal considerations, reflecting the project’s commitment to the responsible use of data and AI, with tools and pipelines designed to respect privacy, comply with legal requirements, support responsible AI practices, and align with societal values.
Finally, the consortium reviewed dissemination and communication activities, focused on engaging stakeholders, sharing knowledge and best practices, and amplifying the project’s impact across sectors and communities.
Supported by Horizon Europe
The DataPACT project is supported by the Horizon Europe program, the European Union’s flagship research and innovation initiative. Submitted under the HORIZON-CL4-2024-DATA-01-01 call for proposals (project ID 101189771), this funding enables the consortium to advance responsible, transparent, and sustainable data and AI practices across Europe.
