Technical interoperability in the EOSC Federation and initial gap analysis

This document is one of the deliverables of the EOSC-A Task Force on “Technical and Semantic Interoperability”.

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Federation aims to provide European researchers with seamless access to a vast array of digital resources. Achieving this vision hinges on robust technical interoperability among its diverse constituent "Nodes." This paper presents an initial gap analysis of technical interoperability within the EOSC Federation, informed by real-world scientific use cases and user stories. Through a comprehensive analysis of collected requirements from various scientifi c communities, including life sciences, photon and neutron research, astronomy and astrophysics, we identify critical gaps in areas such as metadata and data discovery, data harmonization and integration, service discovery and interoperability, authentication and authorization (AAI), support for federated compute and storage, data synchronization and transfer, and resource management and allocation. Building on these insights, we propose a set of new EOSC federating capabilities and technical solutions for addressing these gaps and fostering an integrated and user-centric research environment. This analysis aims to guide the evolution of the EOSC Federation, moving beyond basic operational services, AAI, and catalogues, towards a more comprehensive and powerful ecosystem for open science.