The opening of the integrated authority to cultural data – GND4C Authority data is ideal to intertwine data on cultural heritage, on library collections and research data across domains. Thus the cooperative hosting the integrated authority files for German speaking countries (GND) has decided to open its structure to non-librarian contributors. The project GND4C is laying the foundation by addressing following goals to fulfill the needs of communities across domains: (1) Building a sustainable governance structure; (2) Enhancing a data model and suitable rule sets; (3) providing a toolbox of data processing applications and interfaces for the integration of existing descriptive metadata (4) Fostering communication in-between the various communities and promoting the visibility of the GND-ecosystem. The project runs for a period of five years. The first half, Phase 1 (period 05/2018 – 03/2021), is dedicated to analyze the various requirements and to conceive the opening process. This will lead to a test-operation of the extended governance structure. The second half, Phase 2 (period 04/2021–09/2023), will focus on the endurance and further the extension of the governance as well as on the implementation of the tools and concepts into productive use. | 
