Amber Daniels1
1WABSI, Australia
Biography:
Amber Daniels is Policy and Governance Lead for the Shared Environmental Analytics Facility (SEAF). With nearly 20 years of experience in higher education, Amber has developed deep expertise in governance, compliance, and innovation strategy. Before joining WABSI, she served as a senior consultant specialising in governance and compliance for the Australian higher education sector.
Amber now brings her governance expertise to the emerging domains of data spaces and collaborative research infrastructure, where she focuses on applying robust policy frameworks to complex digital environments. Through her work with the Australian Access Federation (AAF), she has contributed as a subject matter expert to AARC guidelines, bringing practical insights to authentication and authorisation frameworks.
Abstract:
The Shared Environmental Analytics Facility (SEAF) is a collaborative initiative working to improve the accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of environmental data. It is built at a regional level to focus on specific users and needs and is supported by lean central shared services.
SEAF is investigating International Data Spaces (IDS) approaches. IDS offers a structured, policy-compliant approach to managing who can access data, under what conditions, and for what purposes. It promises transparent, enforceable sharing agreements and supporting FAIR+CARE principles. For Australia’s complex and distributed environmental data landscape, this model may help simplify collaboration while preserving the autonomy of data custodians.
In this paper, we explore the governance and policy opportunities of IDS in relation to SEAF. We outline the current challenges facing SEAF: aligning incentives across diverse stakeholders, integrating legacy data systems, and translating high-level architectures into practical, domain-specific implementations. We also explore challenges and opportunities specific to IDS, in particular repeatability and transparency, cost, time and adaptation from the EU to the Australian context.
SEAF is in operation and expanding into additional regions and these issues are real and important. We are keen to partner and learn from others and invite researchers and policy experts to engage with us in this work.