Watch the EULF Blueprint introductory video and / or browse the online EULF Blueprint.

Location data is fundamental to digital public services and the wider economy, delivering value in combination with other data, and supporting innovation through ‘location intelligence’.

In this context, there is a need for interoperability supporting these services across Europe, and an important role for both government-authorised core location data and sector-specific location data.

The European Union Location Framework (EULF) project, which was part of the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA) programme took action to tackle these challenges.

The EULF vision is to create and promote a coherent European framework of guidance and actions to foster cross-sector and cross-border interoperability and use of location information in digital public services, building on national SDIs and INSPIRE , and resulting in more effective services, savings in time and money, and contributions to increased growth.

The EULF Blueprint is a guidance framework for a wide audience to implement the EULF vision. It is based on an extensive EU survey and consultation with stakeholders and therefore embodies a wide range of views and experience.

The EULF Blueprint has been updated periodically to keep pace with developments. This updated version (v4) has been produced by the European Location Interoperability Solutions for e-Government (ELISE) project, which is part of the ISA2 programme.

The document has six main readers:

• Policy Maker
• Digital Public Service Owner, Manager or Implementer
• ICT Manager, Architect or Developer
• Data Manager or Data Scientist
• Public Sector Location Data Provider
• Private Sector Product or Service Provider

Readers can also use the Blueprint’s role-based approach to explore the document. The blueprint has five focus areas covering:

• Policy and strategy alignment,
• digital government integration,
• standardisation and reuse,
• return on investment and governance,
• partnerships and capabilities.

For each focus area, the ‘current state’ assessment and ‘vision’ are outlined. The key points for progressing from the current state to the vision are then expanded into a series of 19 recommendations, each describing the rationale and expected benefits (why?), a checklist of associated actions (how?), potential problem areas in implementing the recommendation (challenges), a variety of best practices across Europe where this has been done successfully, cross-references to related recommendations in the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), and further reading related to the recommendation.