LNDS Annual Report 2023 – our year in review

Welcome to our first annual report! We are happy to introduce you to our initial achievements and our financial results. In our annual report we focus on the fiscal year 2023, with some notes on our start-up phase late 2022 as well as some status updates and outlook on 2024.

An overview of the contents of the Annual Report 2023

The 2023 Annual Report delves in to the first operational year of LNDS. We have summarised some of the key contents of the Annual Report in this article. You find the entire report for download at the end of the page. As a proof of our commitment to transparency, we have published all data points of the Annual Report on the Luxembourgish Open Data platform. 

Who we are – creation history

In 2023, LNDS gained momentum following the legal establishment* in July 2022. We demonstrated and celebrated the progress on 4 December 2023 with a formal launch event and the first edition of our signature event, the Data Summit Luxembourg. The launch event took place in the European Convention Center in Kirchberg, where Minister for Research and Higher Education and Minister for Digitalisation, Stéphanie Obertin, gave an opening address at the and declared LNDS officially “open to serve”.

We create services, tools & infrastructure

In our first full year we started to develop a rich portfolio of data enabling services. In addition we developed a suite of supportive tooling and infrastructure. We launched ten initial services and five software tools into production, at a “minimal viable product” level. All services and tools were co-created with data partners in concrete data projects, enabling validation in real-use environments. In 2024, we will further develop the services and tools according to their respective roadmaps, alongside new additions to this initial portfolio. 

Projects to create impact

Whereas we devote half of our resources to the development of these capabilities, we allocate the other half to concrete data projects, with a focus on creating societal impact. Data projects are identified, scoped and prioritised with our various data partners, in a broad variety of domains: health, social-economic, energy, education, environment, amongst others. Seven projects were presented at the Data Summit Luxembourg in December 2023, in various stages of implementation. The projects demonstrate the broad variety of challenges at hand: data governance and data management, data cataloguing, data analytics, data visualisation, and more. 

In addition, we participate in a multitude of internationally funded projects, primarily through the European Commission. These projects provide us with a great network and knowledge access, through collaboration with renowned partners in various consortia. The internationally funded projects also provide platforms for international collaboration and co-creation. Most of these international projects are 50% funded, some even 100%, which brings additional funding to Luxembourg. 

Legal basis

LNDS contributed to a project of law, to implement the European Data Governance Act into Luxembourg. This regulation stipulates a broad set of services, to equip the public sector with the necessary governance and tools to enable secondary use of public sector data. Together with other governmental partners, we are preparing to provide several of these tools and services. These include secure processing environments, pseudonymisation/anonymisation tools, data access request support, and more. In parallel, the European Health Data Space Regulation (EHDS) is in review, and LNDS contributed to the Member State negotiations on this forthcoming regulation. The Health Data Access Body project got awarded with European funding to prepare for the implementation of EHDS. 

Our people – our main asset

Our strength lies in our people—their expertise and dedication drive LNDS forward. We drive a trustable, thriving and transparent culture, as a basis to grow confidence with our data partners and in the public domain.

Bert Verdonck, CEO

The main assets of LNDS are the brains of its people: this is a people’s business. Our team is very diverse (23 nationalities, 38% women) and very experienced in the various data-centric specialties. Our people come from various backgrounds, from the public- and private sector, as well as research. We run the organisation in a very flat and agile structure. We run the organisation in a very flat and agile structure. Our culture is based on our values – trustable, thriving and transparent -, as a basis to grow confidence with our data partners and in the public domain. Furthermore, we do not limit our developments to our local staff. We constantly look for opportunities to outsource or to partner with external parties.

A look into the future

Looking forward, we will continue to develop the LNDS capabilities, services, and tools, and expand our support to a growing set of impactful data projects. We target having at least fifty data projects finalised or in progress by the end of 2024. The results of at least ten projects will be presented at our annual signature event – Data Summit Luxembourg on 11 December 2024. That is a great and ambitious challenge to have. 

Read the LNDS Annual Report

Please read and download the LNDS Annual Report 2023 here below. Aligned with our values and commitment to transparency, all data points of the Annual Report are published on the Luxembourgish Open Data platform. You can access the data here. 

* The Luxembourg National Data Service is a brand of PNED G.I.E., an economic interest group established by the Luxembourg government and public institutes.

Media contact: Catharina Schram, media@lnds.debug.lu