Abstract
This report presents a practical Data Governance Framework developed during the WATSON project to support secure, transparent and compliant data sharing
across European food supply chains. The framework defines a template for a data governance policy with clear roles, responsibilities and processes for data
providers, stewards, consumers and governance bodies, aligned with European data strategies and regulations. It integrates data quality requirements,
metadata aligned with the FAIR principles, interoperability in accordance with standards, and access and usage control supported by strong security
mechanisms including authentication, encryption, logging, incident handling and data sharing agreements. The framework is demonstrated through a detailed fish supply chain traceability use case, which includes event definitions, dataset classifications and access rights matrices showing which actors may access which data and under what conditions. This example illustrates how data sovereignty can be ensured while enabling the flow of high quality, trustworthy data needed for traceability, coordination, compliance and fraud detection.