The people layer of data-sharing infrastructure
Infrastructure answers how data travels between organisations. Data about people also needs a record of whose it is, why it is shared, on what basis, and who relied on it. That is the layer Essence builds.
In October 2026 the Government Digital Service set out the government's Data Sharing Infrastructure Initiatives, a £12 million programme "to help businesses access, manage and share data more effectively". Its first step supports the National Digital Twin Programme and the infrastructure that programme has built, the National Node Net. The programme has said it wants to hear "about what makes data sharing work in practice, and where barriers remain".
This piece offers our view on one part of that question.
What the infrastructure answers
In the programme's words, the National Node Net "helps organisations discover, govern, access and share data using common governance arrangements". It is open source and Crown IP, and organisations can take part while keeping their existing systems. That addresses a problem many data-sharing efforts stall on: how data gets from the organisation that holds it to the one that needs it, on terms both can rely on.
Most of the examples the programme gives concern assets and networks, such as transport and energy. One comes closer to home. The programme's work "has explored how housing and energy performance data can be brought together to help identify homes that could benefit from energy efficiency improvements". Data about a home is often data about the people who live there.
The questions personal data brings
When shared data describes a person or a household, the organisations involved need answers to four further questions, however the data travels:
- whose data it is;
- the purpose it is shared for;
- whether it rests on the person's consent or on the service's own lawful basis, such as public task;
- who relied on it, and when.
These questions do not replace the work of moving data. They sit beside it. We think of the answers as a people layer: a record kept with each share that the person and the organisation can both read.
What that layer looks like on Essence
Essence is one example of that layer, built for data a person holds in their own vault.
Consent works field by field. Each shared field has its own consent record, so a person can withdraw their address and leave their date of birth in place.
The person's choice and the organisation's basis are recorded apart. Since our August release, a grant can record the Article 6 basis the processing rests on, why it applies and how long the recipient may keep the data afterwards. All three are fixed when the grant is made. Where no basis is recorded, the platform says "not declared" rather than assume consent. Since our October release, a grant can also be tied to a single purpose from a closed list, and must end no more than 366 days after it is given.
Both parties can read a receipt for a grant. It shows the purpose, the basis, the retention period and what withdrawal does, and it carries no personal data.
For the last question, the platform keeps an append-only record of who did what, covering the people who run the platform as well as the people who use it. A person can read the history of a share: when it was granted, each time it was used and when it was withdrawn. An organisation's administrators see the part of the record that concerns their organisation.
Each country has its own instance of the platform, with its own databases and keys, and that record of activity stays in the country.
The detail is in three explainers: How consent works at Essence (essence.digital/knowledge/how-consent-works), Consent and the lawful basis (essence.digital/knowledge/consent-and-the-lawful-basis) and Where your data lives (essence.digital/knowledge/where-your-data-lives).
Two pieces of work, judged separately
Moving data between organisations under governance they all accept is one piece of work. Recording a person's part in that sharing is another. The two can be designed, tested and assessed on their own terms, and a public body will want to ask questions of both.
The lawful basis stays with the organisation. Essence records the basis a service declares, holds it fixed and shows it to the person.
For teams thinking about what makes data sharing work in practice, our view is that the people layer is part of the answer whenever the data is about people. If you are working through those questions for a service of your own, we would be glad to compare notes.
Published 10 October 2026