article: gdi finland workshop

Author: yasinmiran

src/content/news/2026/gdi-node-hackathon-finland/cover.png

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+---
+layout: "../../../../layouts/page.astro"
+variant: "article"
+title: "Norway Joins 19 Countries at GDI Node Hackathon in Lapland"
+date: "March 11, 2026"
+cover:
+    source: ./cover.png
+summary: "ELIXIR Norway participated in a three-day GDI hackathon in Finnish Lapland, where 59 developers from 19 EU countries advanced the federated Genomic Data Infrastructure for secure cross-border genomic data sharing."
+tags: [genomic-data, gdi, hackathon, european-collaboration]
+---
+
+Last week, the [Genomic Data Infrastructure (GDI)](https://gdi.onemilliongenomes.eu/) project held a three-day hackathon in Lapland, Finland, bringing together 59 participants — mostly developers — from 19 EU countries that are signatories to the [1+ Million Genomes (1+MG)](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/1-million-genomes) initiative. Norway was among the countries represented.
+
+The hackathon focused on advancing the technical capability for secure and federated human genomic data management that is compliant with the 1+MG Framework. Each participating country demonstrated their national node, and teams worked on harmonising deployments to enable federated gene variant lookups in the next stage.
+
+## Key outcomes
+
+- **3 cross-border data integration bugs** identified and fixed during the hackathon
+- **15 countries** now have national data services securely connected to the European end-user portal
+- **Clear organisation** of national genomic data environments into staging and production tiers
+- Many European countries now have at least one service technically integrated into the user portal at the European level, with some already in a production-like environment
+
+The new services enable data discovery through a genome allele frequency browser and a dataset catalogue.
+
+## Why this matters
+
+This hackathon marks an important milestone in the 1+MG initiative. The increased technical capability moves Europe closer to an operational federated Genomic Data Infrastructure — enabling researchers to create real value from the Genome of Europe data while keeping safeguards and trust at the centre.
+
+The 1+MG initiative is making a federated network of human genomic data across Europe a reality, with privacy and security built in from the ground up.
+
+For more details, see the [GDI project's post on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/1mgenomes-secure-federated-share-7436789493246021632-cKoA).