US Clouds: German Research Foundation DFG wants to bring data back from abroad

The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) has launched a funding initiative to secure endangered data sets and promote resilience in science. The call to bring important research data back from abroad is a response to the increasing dependence of German and European science on non-European tech corporations, primarily from the USA, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. It specifically targets repositories hosted by these US cloud providers or within the USA itself.

For the period from 2025 to an anticipated 2027, the DFG is providing financial resources of an undisclosed amount, according to the call, to extract data sets and research results from foreign cloud storage. It warns that otherwise, there is a risk that these may no longer be available for scientific use, either now or in the future. Therefore, relevant data must be secured and made permanently usable for researchers in Germany. The overarching goal is to strengthen the resilience of data infrastructures in the research sector.

As the most important and largest self-governing organization for science and research funding in Germany, the DFG supports measures within the initiative, such as acquiring storage capacities and providing personnel resources for data exploration, curation, or thematic aggregation. Necessary legal reviews and the integration of secured data sets into supra-regional or European structures and clouds are also eligible for funding. A key focus is on developing frameworks and technologies for integrating relevant repositories into such European networks.

European Open Science Cloud becomes important

The corresponding funding stream is oriented towards integration into the European Research Area. The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is expected to play an important role in this. Resilience is significantly derived from the redundant storage of data at the European level, the DFG writes. Accordingly, initiatives are supported that make data secured in Germany available through thematically oriented European infrastructures, or projects that drive the development of a distributed and networked storage or data infrastructure.

Even the refinancing of expenses already incurred, such as material and personnel costs or investments in storage media since August 1st, is possible to keep particularly endangered data sets accessible in the short term. However, this retroactive approach only applies if the expenses were incurred in addition to data security efforts and if there is a risk of information loss without the financial injection. Applications for this must be submitted by November 10th at the latest. The entire program runs until the end of 2027, with applications being accepted until September 30, 2027.

Furthermore, the DFG is funding future expenses to ensure the transfer and aggregation of data sets and to make the collections available again. In addition to storage capacities, qualified personnel such as data curators with specific expertise can also be considered here.

Digital Sovereignty in the Age of Trump

At its core, the DFG is positioning itself for the much-vaunted digital sovereignty. It is concerned with the ability to independently control and decide on one's own data, infrastructures, and technologies. The main problem is considered to be the legal framework in the USA, particularly the Cloud Act. This law allows US authorities to access data stored by US companies under certain circumstances. This applies even if these bits and bytes are physically located on servers outside the United States.

For German research, this represents a significant risk, as sensitive information and results are theoretically exposed to access by foreign state authorities. They could also become unavailable from one day to the next for political or regulatory reasons. The political dimension comes into play particularly in the form of US President Donald Trump. His unpredictable or protectionist stance, which could undermine existing transatlantic agreements, including those on data exchange, is considered a wake-up call for the current pursuit of sovereignty.

"Certainly, the changed transatlantic relationship has led to a rethink here," explains Dennis-Kenji Kipker, Research Director at the Frankfurt Cyberintelligence Institute, to heise online. He also notes that in scientific practice, those responsible "have paid too little attention to legal and technical data sovereignty in the past." Although independent data storage is often available at university data centers, "external providers were frequently used without prior checks to store sensitive research data and share it within consortia." University data protection officers and ethics committees are too rarely involved in such decisions. The DFG's initiative is also groundbreaking beyond academia.

(nen)