EDM Association · Community of Practice
Solid Community of Practice
Making regulated data shareable, without losing control of it.
The EDM Association and the Open Data Institute are convening the community that will make Solid ready for real-world use for finance, healthcare and government, with conformance anchored to Cloud Data Management Capabilities (CDMC) and sector mappings built on assets such as the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO). Lead how Solid reshapes your sector.
Participation is open: anyone can register on EDMConnect, not just EDM Association members. All outputs are published under the MIT licence.
300+
participants in the W3C Solid Community Group
3
priority sectors: finance, healthcare, government
2015
Solid founded at MIT by Sir Tim Berners-Lee
MIT
open licence for every output of the community
About the community
A two-way exchange between industry and the Solid project
The Community of Practice pairs the data-management expertise of the EDM Association's members and partners with Solid's open, standards-based approach to giving people and organisations genuine control over their data. Industry brings the requirements, domain models and demand of regulated sectors; Solid brings a way to break down the silos, lock-in and duplication that hold those sectors back.
The EDM Association
The global association elevating data management as a strategic business priority. EDMA convenes and sponsors the community, bringing its member and partner network, the FIBO ontology, the CDMC framework, the EDMConnect platform, and the authority to engage regulators, standards bodies and commercial partners.
The Open Data Institute
The ODI became Solid's steward in October 2024, bringing more than a decade of experience in responsible data innovation. Its stewardship ensures the infrastructure develops to benefit society, with governance that reflects community values and standards that enable global interoperability. The ODI maintains Solid's open-source foundations, is supporting the standardisation of parts of Solid technology in the Linked Web Storage group, trains hundreds of new developers, and catalyses use-case pilots that demonstrate real impact.
What is Solid?
Solid is a privacy-by-design protocol built on standard web technologies. Rather than each application holding its own copy of a person's or organisation's data, Solid stores it in a Pod: a personal or organisational datastore with fine-grained access controls, so applications read and write only with permission. Because Pods use open, linked-data standards, the same data can be reused across applications without bespoke integration, and it stays under the control of the entity it describes. Solid was developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee's research group at MIT, nurtured by a global community, and is standardised through the W3C Solid Community Group and the Linked Web Storage Working Group.
Why Solid
The problem is structural: every service keeps its own copy of your data
The same data is collected, copied and secured many times over, yet is rarely current, portable or under the control of the person or organisation it describes. The result: silos and duplication, more places for data to be breached, vendor lock-in, all-or-nothing consent, and identity re-proofed at every institution. Solid fixes this at the root by decoupling data from applications.
Reduced data custody and breach exposure
Organisations read data from the Pod instead of holding and securing their own copies, lowering cost, liability and compliance burden.
Reusable verifiable credentials
Already-proven identity and eligibility attributes are reused across sectors, cutting onboarding time and Know Your Customer / Anti-Money Laundering (KYC/AML) cost.
A single, current source of truth
Less reconciliation effort and stale-copy error; people update their details once, not everywhere.
Interoperability without lock-in
An open W3C-track standard; the same meaning across institutions comes from the shared sector ontologies this group will define.
New permissioned services and revenue
Value-added services, such as bank-provided identity, built on user-controlled data.
AI- and agent-ready data
As AI agents develop, Solid keeps users in control: structured, consented, attributable data as a foundation for trustworthy AI.
Regulatory future-proofing
Demonstrable user control aligns with GDPR Article 20, the EU Data Act and the Digital Markets Act.
Better experiences for people
Data that travels with people across platforms and providers, for more trustworthy digital experiences.
Real implementations prove the model works: VITO's healthcare platform, Graphmetrix in US construction supply chains, Muze building Solid apps in the Dutch personal-data-vault ecosystem, and pilots with the BBC, the Bezos Earth Fund, NatWest Bank and Visa across media, sustainability, banking and commerce. Adoption is still early; assessing that readiness and closing the gaps is the remit of this community.
Who it's for
Every organisation has a role
The community matches each organisation to a concrete role around real sector pilots: demand first, with supply, standards and assurance built around it. Wherever you sit in the data ecosystem, there is a seat at the table.
Anchor sponsors & sector champions
Institutions in finance, healthcare or government ready to lead
Put your name on your sector's defining Solid pilot and steer it to your priorities.
Infrastructure & hosting providers
Cloud platforms, Solid server builders, managed-hosting and data-custody operators
Define what makes Solid ready for real-world deployment, or launch Pod hosting and regulated data custody as a new service line.
Ontology & identifier stewards
Standards bodies and stewards of domain ontologies, identifier schemes and terminologies
Hold the pen on the mappings and identifiers your whole sector will reference.
Certification & assurance
Assessors, auditors and advisory firms with data-governance and CDMC practices
Co-design the conformance scheme and extend your accreditation into a new Solid assessment line. Be first-accredited.
Product vendors
Data-management and governance software vendors
Ship a certified Solid-native product into the EDM Association's member shop window.
Data-rich organisations
Banks, insurers, healthcare providers and public agencies on the demand side
Cut data-sharing friction now and give people a real data wallet ahead of regulation.
Not sure where you fit? Join the open community call and we'll help you find out.
Sectors & use cases
Proving the value where the stakes are highest
Finance, healthcare and government are the priorities because that is where the costs of the status quo are highest and where credible champions already sit. Demonstrating value there is the fastest route to wider adoption.
Finance
Home of the EDM Association's roots and the FIBO community, and the first sector the community is proving Solid in.
Lending on verified, current data
Loan and mortgage agreements modelled in FIBO and verified against the borrower's Pod let lenders read data at source instead of re-keyed, hard-to-verify copies.
Reusable KYC/AML onboarding
Verifiable credentials for identity, address and source of funds are proofed once and confirmed by signature check, cutting weeks of onboarding and significant compliance cost per client.
Bank-provided identity services
Banks issue credentials into a customer's Pod and let the customer present them to third parties, turning a compliance cost centre into a service line. NatWest has piloted customer-controlled “life moments” on Solid, such as updating a name across services from the customer's own Pod.
Healthcare
Among the most mature areas of Solid deployment, with real clinical data and real consent already in production pilots.
Patient-controlled records
Early healthcare pilots let patients share health data across healthcare providers and researchers; an NHS pilot in Greater Manchester used personal stores to improve dementia care.
Medication management
A medication record in the patient's Pod, described with shared, standardised definitions, gives pharmacists, prescribers and hospitals one current view and fewer reconciliation errors. EverBetter is building a patient-controlled health record on Solid using standard clinical vocabularies such as FHIR and SNOMED CT.
A governed home for consumer health data
Readings from consumer devices that fall outside HIPAA gain a consented, governed home, addressing a gap regulators are actively grappling with. This model can cover activity trackers, sports watches and heart-rate monitors.
Government
The clearest evidence yet that citizen-controlled data can operate as public infrastructure.
Citizen vaults and “tell us once”
Citizen vaults built on Solid can support public services including diploma sharing and online death registration.
Social services for vulnerable citizens
A citizen-controlled Pod holds verified documents and releases only what each service needs: control and dignity for the data subject. Code for PDX's Solid wallet already helps people at risk of homelessness complete housing-assistance applications.
Less repeated admin
UK residents spend roughly 56 hours a year on government admin. A government-backed vault lets citizens maintain core data once, with services reading it by permission.
See the Solid Project website for deployed services and applications, and the ODI's visual walkthrough of the Solid user experience.
Work programme
What the community will deliver
The deliverables follow directly from the community's objectives: raise awareness and adoption, assess Solid's readiness, demonstrate value through real deployments, and develop the best practice and commercial understanding that adoption depends on.
Use cases & reference implementations
Demonstrable deployments showing Solid's value in each sector, with case studies and reports, plus webinars detailing implementers' experience.
How sector ontologies connect
Recommendations for how established domain ontologies, identifier schemes and terminologies (FIBO and peers) connect to Solid in each sector, rather than inventing new ontologies.
Security & functional requirements
What a Solid service must do to be deployed in a given sector, including how providers satisfy cloud and data-management expectations such as CDMC.
The Solid Certification
A neutral, evidence-based mark certifying that a Solid server, application or identity provider meets a target sector's bar. It layers a recognised cyber-security baseline, CDMC data-control conformance and sector-specific requirements, with assurance tiered from self-assessment to independent verification.
How data products connect (Solid–DPROD)
Recommendations for how DPROD — the EDM Council / EKGF profile of W3C DCAT — describes where the data products in a Pod live and how to request access.
An open community platform
A neutral home for the community, branded with the Solid identity and hosted on EDMConnect, with every output published under the MIT licence.
Governance
Open participation, consensus decisions
The community starts as an open forum while the work is defined, then converts into a formal working group with defined work items and deliverables. Decisions are taken by consensus, facilitated by the co-chairs, with the EDM Association and the Open Data Institute providing overall stewardship.
Co-chairs
Jim Halcomb
EDM Association
Jacobus Geluk
agnos.ai
Roberto Breitman
Open Data Institute
Stuart Coleman
Open Data Institute
Jesse Wright
Open Data Institute
FIBO and ontology leadership: Shaun Rolls and Elisa Kendall. Sector leads for finance, healthcare and government drive each workstream.
How we meet
- A standing bi-weekly community call, open to all participants.
- Sector and project sub-groups on their own cadence as the work matures.
- Webinars and working sessions around milestones, including showcases of what members have built.
- Discussion and documents on EDMConnect; code and deliverables on GitHub under the MIT licence.
Get involved
Lead how Solid reshapes your sector.
Join now with a use case for connecting Solid to sector standards, and be first in line when the market follows.
1
Register on EDMConnect
The community is hosted on the EDM Association's EDMConnect platform. Anyone can register; membership is not required.
2
Join the community call
The bi-weekly call is open to all: hear from the W3C Solid Community Group, the Linked Web Storage Working Group and implementers across sectors.
3
Bring a use case or take a role
Sponsor a sector pilot, build or host infrastructure, steward mappings, co-design the certification, or pilot Solid in your own organisation.