E-GOVERNMENT

(A.) Policy and legislation

(A.1) Policy objectives

In the digital single market strategy, interoperability appears as an important enabler for boosting competitiveness. Cross-border interoperability is also considered key for modernising public administrations. At the European level, the Once Only Principle has for the first time been mandated by the inclusion in the forthcoming Single Digital Gateway Regulation. The Once Only Principle entails that citizens and businesses provide diverse data only once in contact with public administrations, while public administration bodies take actions to internally share and reuse these data – even across borders – always in respect of data protection regulations and other constraints.

In addition to the multilingual challenge, semantic interoperability is compromised by the lack of commonly agreed and widely used data models, divergent interpretations of the same data and the absence of common reference data (e.g. code-lists, identifiers, taxonomies, references to organisations, geospatial references, license collections, etc.).

The European Commission, in the context of the ISA2 programme (Interoperability solutions for European Public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens), is undertaking a number of initiatives to achieve semantic interoperability in Europe.

The ISA2 programme is contributing in this area through several streams of work, focusing on the development, promotion and management of common data specifications, further described in the relevant subsections: DCAT-AP as a data standard to describe open data catalogues and datasets; ADMS-AP 2.0 as metadata description of reusable solutions, such as legal templates, data specifications and standards, technical protocols and open source software; and Core Vocabularies as generic, simplified and reference data models of important master data types used across public administration information systems and applications, such as persons, businesses, locations, public organisations and public services.

In all of these work streams, care should be taken to ensure compatibility between the public sector and what the private sector can achieve, noting existing standards and specifications. There are accordingly some main technology areas that need to be addressed further and where standards are important for supporting the implementation of EU policy objectives:

DCAT — This is addressed in detail in the section on Public Sector Information (PSI), Open Data and Big Data including a number of proposed actions;
Exchange of metadata on re-usable interoperability assets among national and international repositories: The Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) is a metadata description of interoperability solutions;
Core Vocabularies to facilitate the development of interoperable IT solutions by ensuring a minimum level of interoperability for public administration master data usually stored in base registries.
The CPSVP-AP aims at describing public services in the same way across different Service Catalogues, to enable federation and search across such catalogues.

(A.2) EC perspective and progress report

DCAT-AP is a specification based on W3C’s Data Catalogue vocabulary (DCAT) for describing public sector datasets in Europe. For more information, see chapter 3.1.3 Public sector information

Exchange of metadata on re-usable interoperability assets (eGovernment)

Public administrations, businesses, standardisation bodies and academia are already producing interoperability solutions that, if (re)used, can facilitate interoperability among public administrations’ services. However, these are not always easy to find. ADMS-AP 2.0 is a common way to describe interoperability solutions making it possible for everyone to search and discover them once shared through the forthcoming federation of repositories containing solutions for promoting interoperability.

With the intention to facilitate the visibility and re-usability of interoperability solutions across-borders and sectors, the Commission has made available a large set of interoperability solutions described using ADMS-AP 2.0, through a federation of asset repositories of Member States, standardisation bodies and other relevant stakeholders. Through this federation, accessible through the Joinup 25 platform, semantic interoperability solutions may be searched and are made available through a single point of access.

Core Vocabularies to facilitate the development of interoperable IT solutions

The Commission’s ISA programme is reducing semantic interoperability conflicts in Europe.

Agreement on definitions for the fundamental concepts should come firstly. These concepts are simplified data models which capture the minimal, global characteristics/attributes of an entity in a generic, country- and domain-neutral manner. Using a different terminology, these specifications are data models for important master data types used by numerous information systems and applications. These specifications are called “Core Vocabularies” in the ISA Programme.

Working together with relevant stakeholders from public administration, industry and academia, the Commission has made available a series of core vocabularies with high reusability potential: the core business, the core location, the core public service, the core public organisation, the core criterion and core evidence, and the core public service vocabularies.

In 2015, the core public service vocabulary application profile (CPSV-AP) also became available. Activities on financial reporting are under consideration.

(A.3) References

Decision (EU) 2015/2240 on interoperability solutions and common frameworks for European public administrations, businesses and citizens (ISA2 programme) as a means for modernising the public sector (ISA2)
Communication 2017/134 on the European Interoperability Framework - Implementation Strategy
Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 November 2003 on the re-use of public sector information (public service information directive)
National eGovernment strategies are in place in many EU Member States and the EFTA countries. Please also see Annex I.
Regulation (EU) 2018/1724 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 2 October 2018 establishing a single digital gateway to provide access to information, to procedures and to assistance and problem-solving services and amending Regulation (EU) No 1024/2012 (Text with EEA relevance.)

(B.) Requested actions

Action 1 Following the Covid-19 situation and the experience gained with the current level of digitalisation of government services, the European Commission and SDOs to cooperate on analysing the current level of digitalisation and identifying gaps and needs regarding standards to support and further accelerate digitalisation. This should also include best practices.

Action 2 European Commission together with SDOs to facilitate a broad exchange with stakeholders and public authorities on standardisation and interoperability for eGovernment services.

(C.) Activities and additional information

(C.1) Related standardisation activities

W3C

ADMS-AP 2.0 specification has been published as a W3C note by the WC3 Linked Government Data Working group. Moreover, the ADMS-AP 2.0 specification has been extended by the ISA Programme to describe technical, legal and organisational interoperability solutions and thus to facilitate their re-usability. This extended specification has already been implemented in the Joinup platform.

https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/gld/raw-file/default/adms/index.html

ITU

ITU-T Focus Group on Data Processing and Management (FG-DPM) was created in March 2017. Recently, FG-DPM concluded its work with the development of several deliverables covering a variety of topics including the following:

DPM Framework for Data-driven IoT and Smart Cities and Communities
Technical enablers for open data platform
Data interoperability
Data quality management for trusted data

The complete list of deliverables is available here: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/dpm

OASIS

The OASIS Transformational Government TC Framework (TGF) advances an overall framework for using information technology to improve the delivery of public services.

The OASIS Legal Document XML (LegalDocML) TC advances worldwide best practices for the use of XML within parliaments, assemblies, or congresses, within courts and tribunals, and generally for legal documents including contracts. The work is based on the Akoma Ntoso UN project. OASIS Akomo Ntoso is the basis of is the future machine-readable structured format for the exchange of legal documents in the EU decision-making process, Akoma Ntoso for European Union (AKN4EU).

In the EU, cross-border secure exchange of documents and data is supported by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF)’s eDelivery Building Block, which uses OASIS/ISO standards as mentioned in the section 3.1.6. Cross-border data exchange for electronic procedures as covered by the Single Digital Gateway regulation and its system for exchange of evidences for use in electronic cross-border transactions will also uses these and other standards.

W3C

The Registered Organization Vocabulary which is based on the Business Core Vocabulary has been published as a W3C Note by the W3C Linked Government Data Working group. http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-regorg/

(C.2) additional information

Exchange of metadata on re-usable interoperability assets (eGovernment):

Several Member States already use ADMS-AP 2.0 to export interoperability solutions from national catalogues (e.g. Germany).

The Open Geospatial Consortium (www.opengeospatial.org) has also standardisation work available relevant to e-Government.

Core Vocabularies to facilitate the development of interoperable IT solutions:

The DG DIGIT and the DG CONNECT have developed other vocabularies and technical specifications to provide interoperability solutions under the ISA2 Programme and the CEF Telecom Programme. The use of these vocabularies and technical specifications is being promoted by the European Commission through funding programmes so public and private organizations are developing pilot projects and solutions that use them. In this context, some common standardisation action will be required to allow the use of these vocabularies and technical specifications in compliance with the public procurement legislation.

25 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/dcat_application_profile/asset_release/dcat-application-profile-data-portals-europe-draft-1

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