NOTICE: The EIRA public review has been extended until the end of September 2015.
As of today, 8 June 2015, the current release v0.9.0 beta of the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA) enters an eight-week public review period. Stakeholders working for public administrations in the field of architecture and interoperability are invited to provide feedback until 3 August 2015.
What is the EIRA?
The European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA), is an architecture content metamodel defining the most salient architectural building blocks (ABBs) needed to build interoperable e-Government systems. The EIRA provides a common terminology that can be used by people working for public administrations in various architecture and system development tasks. The EIRA was created and is being maintained in the context of Action 2.1 of the ISA Programme. The EIRA uses (and extends) the ArchiMate language as a modelling notation and uses service orientation as an architectural style. The EIRA is aligned with the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and complies with the context given in the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS). The figure below provides a high-level overview of the four views in EIRA. Each of the four views consists of a set of ABBs and relations pertaining to the legal, organisational, semantic and technical domain of an Interoperable European Architecture. Each view has entry - and exit points from one view to another. In the period September 2014 – May 2015, a number of pilots (see pilot report) were conducted using the EIRA with public administrations in Denmark, Estonia, and The Netherlands, and with European Commission Directorate-Generals DIGIT, CONNECT (e-SENS project), and MARE.
Further information about the EIRA can be obtained in the document 'An introduction to the European Interoperability Reference Architecture v0.9.0' (EIRA_v0.9.0_beta_overview.pdf).
Figure 1 - European Interoperability Reference Architecture
How can the EIRA be used?
Public administrations can use the EIRA to:
- Design Solution Architectures: Accelerate the design of solutions that support the delivery of interoperable digital public services (across borders and sectors);
- Assess portfolios: Provide a reference model for comparing existing architectures in different policy domains and thematic areas, to identify focal points for convergence and reuse;
- Communicate about and share solutions: Help documenting the most salient interoperability elements of complex solutions and facilitate the sharing of reusable solutions;
- Discover and reuse solutions: Ease the discovery and reuse of interoperability solutions through the Cartography Tool.
How can you help?
The public consultation period is open until 3 August 2015. Stakeholders working for public administrations in the field of architecture and interoperability are invited to:
- Download the release 0.9.0 of the EIRA from the Joinup platform;
- Login to Joinup (registration is required); and
- Provide your comments on the bottom of the page ‘release 0.9.0 of the EIRA’ (login is required).
What happens with your feedback?
- All comments will be monitored, processed and analysed;
- Based on the comments, requests for change will be proposed;
- Resolutions of those issues will be shared on Joinup and the approved requests for change will lead to a new release of the EIRA.
Where can you find more information?
- ISA Action 2.1 on European Interoperability Architecture
- EIRA community on Joinup
- EIRA v0.9.0 release page
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