Research, development, and innovative activities (RDI) and education are the core businesses of the Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS). The Finnish HEIs’ Digivision ecosystem project has well-channelled the digital transformation of higher education. However, Finnish UAS does not have the same kind of digital transformation project for RDI activities. The IT barometer of Finnish HEIs CIOs 2024 shows that only 2 % of UAS CIOs' near-term development courses of action support RDI activities, compared to 23 % of measures to support education, teaching, and learning. We set up an RDI data management working group and conducted a qualitative survey to determine where this bias comes from and whether it needs to be corrected. Digital and data ecosystems studies reveal that organisations' digital transformation guides them to share data resources, thereby building service and data ecosystems, e.g. (Altendeitering et al., 2024; Oberländer et al., 2025). Thus, we must improve our communication and collaboration capabilities and IT capabilities to support and create national and international RDI data ecosystems. Consequently, I have listed three courses of action and three means of improving UAS RDI data ecosystems.