The Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel Enhanced Data Sharing Working Group recommended the creation of a data science infrastructure necessary to connect repositories, analytical tools, and knowledge bases to allow data to be aggregated, queried, analyzed, and visualized in unique and powerful ways within and across data types. In line with this vision, the NCI has created components - the Genomic Data Commons (GDC) and the Cancer Genomics Cloud Pilots - that define some of the core elements and capabilities necessary for realizing an NCI Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC), which itself is an important component of a National Cancer Data Ecosystem. Building upon the experience gained in developing the GDC and the Cloud Pilots and evaluating the gaps present in those initiatives relative to a CRDC, NCI is defining a reusable, expandable framework for the Data Commons. This Commons Framework will include and support: (1) secure user authentication and authorization; (2) data submission, including validation against data models and vocabularies; (3) domain-specific, extensible data models; (4) principles for data and tool discoverability; (5) an API and container environment for tools and pipelines; (6) and user workspaces for storing data, tools, and results.