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Dashrath Chauhan, Sasha Siegel, Andy Yates, Tomas Fitzgerald, Stephanie Li, Jimmy Payyappilly (GA4GH Tech Team)

Accessing and using large-scale genomic datasets remains challenging due to fragmented data repositories, inconsistent access mechanisms, and governance restrictions across institutions. Traditional approaches to access control, such as Unix permissions or institution-specific systems, are rigid and not designed for federated, policy-aware collaboration. Researchers also face difficulties in reliably retrieving data, discovering relevant datasets, and running workflows across diverse computing environments. The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) provides standards that address these barriers. The Data Repository Service (DRS) standardizes identifiers and retrieval of data objects across repositories. The Workflow Execution Service (WES) supports workflow portability across execution platforms. Passports enable federated, governance-aware access decisions using digital visas. Data Connect enables federated queries to discover datasets across repositories. The poster demonstrates this approach on a dataset of ~200,000 human exome CRAM files, showing how GA4GH standards can enable scalable, secure, and interoperable access to sensitive research data.