Report on data made available for research by governmental authorities (NFDI4Earth Deliverable D2.3.1)

This report examines how governmental data can be made more accessible and usable for research in Earth System Science (ESS) by applying the FAIR principles --- Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Using High-Value Datasets (HVD) defined under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/138 (DVO-HVD) as a pilot case, it analyses workflows, standards, and infrastructures that support discoverability and reporting. HVD---such as national-scale climate, hydrology, and land-use datasets---must be published as Open Data, tagged in metadata, and reported at the Member State level. Their stringent requirements expose gaps in metadata quality, harvesting consistency, and cataloguing, making them ideal for testing improvements. The report focuses on three key questions: how agencies can improve the way, they publish datasets; how ESS scientists can effectively find and access them; and what is needed for a sustainable, end-to-end data pipeline. It reviews the legal context (PSI Directive, DVO-HVD, DNG, GeoZG) and infrastructures including GDI-DE, GovData, umwelt.info, and NFDI4Earth (OneStop4All/KnowledgeHub). Findings highlight the need for harmonised metadata, semantic search, stronger feedback channels, and richer documentation. Without claiming to propose complete technical solutions, the report provides a roadmap for strengthening data infrastructures to serve both governmental agencies and the scientific community. It shows how HVD can act as a catalyst for broader, FAIR-aligned improvements.