As part of its mission to enable secure, scalable, and interoperable data-sharing, the National Digital Twin Programme (NDTP) has been funding and leading the development of an open-source data-sharing infrastructure known as the Integration Architecture (IA).
The IA is designed to provide a trusted, federated data-sharing framework, allowing organisations to manage and exchange information securely while maintaining control over their own data. By establishing a distributed, interoperable, and secure foundation for data-sharing, the IA plays a critical role in supporting the long-term vision of a National Digital Twin (NDT).
Developed collaboratively with other parts of government as well as industry, the IA is already being deployed, tested, and extended by organisations across multiple sectors. This work is vital as ensures the IA remains adaptable, practical, and aligned with real-world needs.
The IA is underpinned by:
Federated sharing
Decentralised data-sharing, where organisations can manage their own data while ensuring interoperability with others
Secure data exchange
Secure and trusted exchange of information, applying appropriate security controls and legal frameworks
Open Source
An open-source approach, allowing organisations to deploy, modify, and extend the architecture without licensing costs
A Federated and Secure Data-Sharing Infrastructure
The IA is a distributed system, where:
Security controls and governance frameworks ensure that only authorised users can access sensitive data
Each organisation can operate its own IA Node, managing and sharing data as required for its operational needs
Nodes can exchange and federate data with other Nodes in a controlled and structured manner
To manage and govern the data-sharing infrastructure, an IA Management Node is under development, which will:
Provide governance, standards, and policy enforcement to maintain a cohesive and secure data-sharing ecosystem
Register and monitor IA Nodes to ensure system integrity
Catalogue available data and manage master/reference datasets
Current Development Status – March 2025 update
Since transitioning into direct government management in 2022, the NDTP has significantly accelerated the IA’s development, deployment, and adoption, achieving several key milestones:
- 2022-2023 – Foundational IA Node components developed
- 2023-2024 – Testing and refinement of foundational IA Node components in real-world data-sharing scenarios
- 2024-2025 – Significant progress in scaling the foundational IA Node components to support a national data-sharing infrastructure, including:
- Deployment of IA Nodes across multiple organisations
- Expanded real-world demonstrator projects, including applications in energy systems, emergency planning, and infrastructure resilience
- Refinement of security, interoperability, and governance frameworks
Next Steps & Priorities for 2025
The IA continues to evolve as a national data-sharing infrastructure, supporting the secure, scalable exchange of data across organisations. This year’s focus includes:
- Refining IA Node federation, ensuring seamless and controlled interoperability between different data-sharing environments
- Strengthening security, governance, and policy alignment, ensuring compliance with emerging regulations
- Further integration into demonstrators, reinforcing the IA’s real-world applicability and scalability
- Enhancing documentation and transparency, ensuring that technical decisions, methodologies, and frameworks are well-documented and accessible to stakeholders
Significant Investment
Significant investment has also been made in develop-test-deploy environments and CI/CD pipelines, allowing for structured, repeatable, and scalable deployment of IA-related assets. This not only supports robust testing and validation but also enables faster adoption and integration across multiple demonstrators.
Open-Source IA Governance
A major driver for 2025 is also the expansion of open-source governance for IA, ensuring that:
- Government, industry, and academia can contribute to the IA codebase, enhancing its capabilities and security
- Formal contribution processes are established, providing a structured and high-quality approach to ongoing development
- NDTP-developed IA resources are widely available, enabling public sector teams and other organisations to integrate and build upon existing assets
As IA Nodes become more widely adopted, the IA is transitioning from an experimental framework to a robust, deployable infrastructure that underpins secure and scalable digital twin ecosystems.
