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DECIDE is a pilot of the European data space for smart and sustainable cities and communities. It connects local governments in Flanders and Germany around the data local democracy itself produces — council decisions and the structured facts derived from them — and shows how such data can be shared across a national border: as machine-readable linked data, under licence where required, with entitlement proven by Verifiable Credentials instead of e-mailed API keys.
On the Flemish side, the lblod programme of ABB, the Agency for Home Affairs of the Flemish government, harvests municipal council decisions and publishes them as linked open data; Ghent pilots the resulting services. On the German side, [ui!] Urban Software Institute represents the pilot cities Freiburg and Bamberg. Two thematic use cases give the exchange its purpose: Restricted Mobility Zones extracts traffic restrictions from decision text and puts them on the map, and Smart Search lets citizens and staff ask council decisions plain-language questions.
[ui!] leads the two thematic use cases and represents the German cities as service and data users of the emerging data space.
The DECIDE Dataspace App: catalog, licence purchase and a data space connector that retrieves licensed Flemish data live — the counterpart to the Flemish data platform.
Unlike Flanders, German cities have no national login for this exchange. [ui!] operates the DECIDE Credential Issuer, which puts their entitlement as a Verifiable Credential into a mobile wallet.
This is where the pieces come together. In the recording, Lisa Brunzel, project manager for DECIDE at [ui!], walks through the live production systems: first the DECIDE Credential Issuer, which puts a city's entitlement as a Verifiable Credential into a mobile wallet; then the DECIDE Dataspace App with its catalogue, licence purchase and connector. The purchase of the licensed Flemish dataset is unlocked by presenting the credential from the wallet, and the recording ends with the retrieval of real data from Flanders.
Screen recording of the production systems, September 2026. Narration in English.
Two planes, one licence level: the data plane retrieves licensed Flemish data through a data space connector, the identity plane proves the entitlement with a Verifiable Credential from the wallet. The architecture page shows every building block, the six steps a city goes through, and what a new city needs to join.
Explore the architecture →The DECIDE Dataspace App fetches real, license-gated datasets from the Flemish partner endpoint, in production since July 2026. Map view and smart search operate directly on the fetched data.
A Verifiable Credential issued under the German pilot cities' own
did:web identity is accepted by the Flemish verifier.
Issuance is verified on iOS and Android production wallets.
The interface contracts, protocol profiles and wallet compatibility rules are published as open documentation, so the next pilot does not pay the same learning costs twice.
Everything in the recording runs on live production services, operated by the two sides of the pilot.
| DECIDE Dataspace App | app.decide.ai-native-ri.eu | password protected during the pilot |
|---|---|---|
| DECIDE Credential Issuer | decide.ai-native-ri.eu | password protected during the pilot |
| Flemish verifier | yasgui.decide.lblod.info | public, operated by the Flemish side |
| Project documentation | lblod/gitbook-decide-write-up | public, shared project write-up |
Access to the password-protected demonstrator apps is available to project partners on request: info@ui.city
