ODRL Policy Chains for the DGA’s Altruism and Intermediation Frameworks

17 pages•Published: October 28, 2026

Marlin Kisia, Gabriela Kurteva, Ruben Verborgh and Beatriz Esteves

Abstract

The EU's Data Governance Act (DGA) establishes two structurally distinct channels for voluntary data sharing: a civic pathway via a Data Altruism Organisation (DAO) for general-interest objectives, and a commercial channel via a Data Intermediation Service Provider (DISP) for economic exchange. Both channels impose permissions, prohibitions and duties, currently governed by prose. The DGA's promise of trustworthy data sharing depends on compliance decisions at machine speed. Although machine-readable vocabularies for some of these obligations exist, they remain a work in progress because of ever-evolving legislation. In this context, we modelled both channels as Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) policy chains, using the Data Privacy Vocabulary (DPV)'s DGA extension to represent actors and obligations, and the Trust Envelope model to capture the intended usage of each exchange. This paper presents a complete lifecycle: from a discoverable shared data pool, through a donation or commercial listing offer, to a concrete usage agreement, and finally to an access request for each channel. The same data point produces structurally different policy chains – the destiny component of a Trust Envelope – depending on the sharing channel: purpose-bound under altruism, commercially scoped under intermediation. Machine-readable policy chains make trustworthy data sharing actionable by reducing legal and technical barriers. The patterns we establish are structurally transferable to successor and analogous frameworks, including the Data Act, as the EU's digital legislation landscape consolidates.

Keyphrases: data altruism, data governance act, data intermediation, dpv, policy based usage control

In: Andrea Cimmino Arriaga, Beatriz Esteves, Nicoletta Fornara and Víctor Rodríguez Doncel (editors). Proceedings of 2nd Workshop ODRL and Beyond: Practical Applications and challenges for poLicy-base access and usage control, OPAL 2026, vol 113, pages 88-104.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/F77R
	https://doi.org/10.29007/fr5l

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{OPAL2026:ODRL_Policy_Chains_DGAs,
  author    = {Marlin Kisia and Gabriela Kurteva and Ruben Verborgh and Beatriz Esteves},
  title     = {ODRL Policy Chains for the DGA’s Altruism and Intermediation Frameworks},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of 2nd Workshop ODRL and Beyond: Practical Applications and challenges for poLicy-base access and usage control, OPAL 2026},
  editor    = {Andrea Cimmino Arriaga and Beatriz Esteves and Nicoletta Fornara and Víctor Rodríguez Doncel},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {113},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/F77R},
  doi       = {10.29007/fr5l},
  pages     = {88-104},
  year      = {2026}}

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