Usability of data from user feedback tool and from assistance services regarding obstacles in the Single Market and quality of resulting report

Percentage of cross-border businesses and citizens who indicate that they have been able to complete the available procedures fully online.

Percentage of businesses and citizens who indicate that they have been able to complete the available procedures fully online.

Ensure that EU citizens and businesses can complete the most important part of their interactions with the administration online

Percentage of businesses and citizens who indicate they have easily found the information they were looking for

Percentage of businesses and citizens who indicate they have found the information they were looking for.

The results of the monitoring efforts should guide continuous improvement of the services and will also be used for a Commission report on the functioning of the single digital gateway to the European Parliament and the Member States every two years. A full evaluation should take place four years after entry into force of the regulation.

The gap analysis (see Annex 4) shows that the areas that need particular monitoring are linked to those Member States that have large gaps in the availability of information and procedures online, especially concerning the access of foreign citizens. The main risk for the successful implementation of the single digital gateway is that the Member States lagging behind today will not be able to catch up quickly enough. However, the planned governance structure based on very close cooperation of the Member States and the Commission, and the possibility to use ESIF funding should help in bringing all Member States up to speed.

The user feedback tool is an efficient way for steering quality management but also for gathering evidence about success. When implemented as an integral part of an information system, it can provide quick and accurate picture of strengths and weaknesses. It is a low-cost option replacing an expensive ongoing evaluation machinery.

The legislative proposal on the single digital gateway foresees that the necessary ongoing monitoring and evaluation measures are based on direct user feedback about the quality, availability and findability of the services offered. In addition, users will be encouraged through a second feedback tool to report problems encountered with the Single Market.

The set of indicators below aims to measure whether the single digital gateway will succeed in meeting the objectives defined in section 4.2 of this impact assessment.

Second report on the functioning of the single digital gateway and, if needed, recommendations for improvement

First report on obstacles in the Single Market based on data gathered through all services within the single digital gateway and the user feedback tool

Testing together with the COM the tools and applications to ensure that they are ready to use as from Q3 2020

Finalisation of work on the IT tools, including a review of IT security plan and measures to cover risks.

Organises trainings, workshops, visits in Member States to discuss/advise Member States as regard the use of the ESF, ERDF and other sources of financing, managed by the COM

Sets up internal governance structure to manage and coordinate all EU level services and portals that are part of the single digital gateway

Establishes a network of stakeholders (Chambers of Commerce, etc.) to discuss with them ideas related to the practical implementation of the single digital gateway

Analyse the needs and efforts which have to be done to ensure full compliance with the Regulation

Analyses different options related to the IT tools and applications listed in the Commission Proposal. Incorporate IT security risk assessment and IT security plans.

Work with the COM on further convergence of information and assistance services towards the objectives of the single digital gateway

Works with MS on further convergence of information and assistance services towards the objectives of the single digital gateway

Work on the single digital gateway can start before the adoption of the regulation. The Commission can start upgrading the current Your Europe portal in line with the overall objectives. The different actions to be implemented as from adoption of the legal proposal are set out in the table below, and in more detail, in Annex 12.

The initiative contributes to and supports the achievements of other ongoing EU initiatives. For an overview of how the single digital gateway links to other initiatives, see Annex 9.

Ongoing initiatives at EU level are addressing aspects of VAT registration and return through the mini-one-stop-shop, as well as patient registration, and thus the single digital gateway needs to articulate its approach with these initiatives. Similarly, the approach needs to be articulated with the planned company law initiative to facilitate the use of digital technologies throughout a company's lifecycle.

Furthermore, the option complements the start-up and scale-up initiative, which promotes the growth of firms by improving the business environment and cutting red tape. SMEs, in particular those trading across borders will benefit from lower costs related to information searches – relatively more than large firms. They will also benefit from the more uniform quality of available online information, assistance and procedures. Those trading across borders will benefit from procedures that are important for them. SMEs will find it easier to identify procedures about the Single Market and thus enter new EU markets. They can signal problems with rules and public authorities in an easy and familiar way in all EU languages.

The preferred option contributes to achieving the objectives of the Digital Single Market strategy, such as tackling discrimination based on residence or nationality. It supports the other actions of the E-government Action Plan. The proposed options are in line with the recommendations of the European Interoperability Framework.

Moreover, the use of the building blocks developed under the Connecting Europe Facility offers possibilities for additional savings of 20-40% and reducing the implementation cycle costs by 40-50%. Helpdesk functions, assistance services and feedback tools can rely on services already available on the national and the EU levels.

The benefit of the gateway, as built on the preferred option, is that it provides a clear framework for the roll-out of national online procedures based on Single Market priorities and principles. The latter can be taken on board already while national programmes are still ongoing. This is more cost-efficient than taking remedial action ex-post. As has been indicated in this assessment, the cross-border perspective tends to be overlooked by the Member States. The leverage effects of the gateway in terms of efficiency and benefits to both citizens and business and for administrations are potentially considerable.

The single digital gateway can rely on the strong foundation of the national technology networks that have already been put in place by Member States. This is also true for those Member States that are lagging behind, given the substantial investments in e-government already planned to cover the gap by 2020, which corresponds to the timeframe for implementation of this initiative.

The preferred option strikes a careful balance between on the one hand the need to leave ownership and responsibility for national information and national procedures with the Member States, and on the other the need to address the obstacles that have occurred over time for citizens and businesses trying to exercise their Single Market rights. For each of the problems to be addressed, the most effective and proportionate solution has been chosen, as explained in the previous sections. The result is an approach that would appear to be both widely supported by Member States and very much welcomed by the intended beneficiaries, the citizens and businesses of Europe. This gives additional reassurance that the preferred option is fully aligned with requirements for subsidiarity and proportionality.

In view of the identified preferred option, the instrument to create the single digital gateway will need to overcome this divergence and address the identified problems in a practical way. It will need to complement the existing directives, regulations and recommendations that establish the different services. It will need to fill in the details where they have been missing and provide the necessary legal basis where voluntary action has not delivered satisfactory results. A regulation based on Articles 21(2), 48 and 114(1) of the Treaty would appear to be the most suitable instrument to satisfy these requirements.

The existing contact points, information and assistance services have been established on the basis of a variety of legally binding and non-binding instruments.

The ISA2 programme is developing reusable building blocks for EU wide interoperability, where the core public service catalogue is of particular importance, as it is envisaged to be used for the single digital gateway. In addition, the development of the common user interfaces foreseen for the single digital gateway could be funded via this programme.

Concerning access to European funding when implementing the single digital gateway, the 2014-2020 ESIF can be used by 17 Member States for funding of e-government programmes and ICT projects. Thirteen Member States are currently using these funds for that purpose. (see Table 6.5 and Annex 11 section 11.3). Many of them have already replaced paper based procedures by online versions on that basis and others could follow that example to comply with the requirements of the single digital gateway.

For the two countries that have the fewest procedures online (still 17 out of 20 missing), moving them online would take EUR 10.2m for each. This is 2 to 3% of the 2014-2020 ESIF funding they have allocated to e-government, so the required investment is relatively minor. It is expected that the single digital gateway approach will lead to costs savings for managing existing services, but it has not been possible to quantify these savings.

Based of the assumed 20 procedures to be made available online, these costs amount to EUR 167 million of initial investment costs and around EUR 8 million of annual running costs for all Member States and the Commission together. The initial investment costs would already be mostly compensated for by the saving of EUR 112 million per year through the digitalisation of only nine out of the ten business procedures (with the 10 citizen procedures remaining unassessed). These figures are only indicative, but show the large potential for cost savings for national administrations from going online. Other areas for potential savings, e.g. deriving from a shift to online information instead of personalised advice to the public, are not included as they could not be calculated.

The preferred package of options has eight cost categories. These are 1) extending the coverage of information; 2) providing information in another language; 3) meeting quality requirements for assistance services; 4) getting procedures online; 5) making online procedures fully transactional across borders; 6) developing the single digital gateway support tools, hosting and maintaining them; 7) promoting the gateway; and 8) managing it, see table 6.8.

-Strong support: The chosen package is broad and ambitious, but it is based on strong support from the Member States and stakeholders. In particular, the Member States will play an essential role in its implementation. During the consultation process, a series of bilateral meetings identified good practices to follow and pitfalls to avoid, based on experience with national e-government programmes. The consultation process has helped to shape the package and has confirmed that there is strong support for it. Likewise, business organisations, chambers of commerce, the European Parliament and the REFIT platform have strongly encouraged the Commission to propose such an initiative.

-Experience-based: The solutions contained in the package have already been tested in practice, as they build on existing services and have been chosen based on feedback from Member States and stakeholders, in particular concerning their good practices. The chosen package is based on the most successful national solutions, in particular the citizen and business portals of France, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Cyprus and Malta. The package also reflects experience gained through the management of EU level networks and portals such as SOLVIT, Your Europe and the contact points, and the Commission-wide digital transformation process.

-More practical and more enforceable: The option includes clear and practical common rules for the range of services provided, integrates the lessons learned and facilitates enforcement. The proposed concrete quality standards for information, assistance and procedures will ensure consistency in service quality that is lacking today. Clearer rules of what makes a procedure fully online and fully accessible for cross-border users will help to prevent new single market obstacles.

-More digital: The current services have been built over several years, and in many cases recent information technology developments have enabled e-government solutions that were not feasible or were much more expensive earlier. Moving procedures online has advanced considerably and it can be expected that all Member States are in the position to complete the move of the most frequently used procedures online relatively quickly, and also make them fully transactional for cross-border users.

-User-driven: Through a common user feedback tool the option will systematically receive feedback on the quality and coverage of the services included. This will ensure that we concentrate resources on what is most important for the users, and provide for an integrated and efficient monitoring tool to assist enforcement. The expected result is a much higher level of customer orientation of these public services, also for cross-border customers.

-Holistic: This option aims at the vertical integration of the whole sequence of information, procedures and assistance services that Single Market users need. It will also link the many separate services that have been created in different policy domains over the past decades. It will go a long way to overcome the current fragmentation and duplication, and the gaps in the currently available information.

Improved knowledge about rights and opportunities, and better-quality online services may also contribute to more firms and citizens claiming these EU rights. An example is the principle of mutual recognition for intra-EU trade in goods that is currently not well-known among businesses.

For EU citizens and businesses with a cross-border perspective, the benefits of having full online access to reliable information and user friendly procedures in a language that they can understand, will be very considerable. They will be able to compare rules and obligations in the different Member States, check them against their EU rights and handle a large part of their administration fully online. They will waste less time trying to find out which rules apply, which documents are needed, visiting administrations, waiting and getting all the paperwork done. The study about administrative formalities has calculated that the costs of cross-border businesses are 50% higher compared to domestic businesses, and that the aggregate cost difference (between the same number of domestic and cross-border businesses, for nine procedures) is EUR 131 million. Almost half of the additional costs for cross-border businesses is caused by translations (EUR 60 million) , followed by additional costs for gathering information (mostly advice, EUR 30 million), submitting documents (EUR 22 million, mostly travel costs if submission in person is required, certification (EUR 11 million) and collecting data and documents (EUR 7 million). The savings for domestic businesses from digitalisation are much greater and in the order of magnitude of EUR 6.5 billion for just nine businesses procedures, and EUR 48 million for cross-border users. As far as information is concerned, businesses could save between EUR 11 and 55 billion annually for researching nine business topics. The benefits for citizens can only be indicated by estimating the number of hours saved. The preferred option would reduce by 60% the 1.5 million hours that citizen currently spend on researching online seven essential topics before going abroad. If these costs, time and hassle could be avoided, not only for businesses but also for citizens, more people would be encouraged to expand their activities across borders due to much increased transparency. Furthermore, e-procedures reduce the risk of administrative errors and corruption.

Based on the analysis above, option 2 is most likely to achieve the objectives efficiently and in a proportionate way, while maximising the benefits for stakeholders. At the same time, this option is best aligned with the ideas and wishes expressed by the Member States so far. Broad support is key for the successful implementation of this ambitious project. The Commission and the Member States will need to work together very closely to achieve an effective, step-by-step implementation of all the different requirements of the preferred option. To illustrate how this could work, a detailed project plan is included in Annex 12.

Option 3 has by far the best scores for meeting the needs of the users (93%). Its fully centralised approach would guarantee a harmonised way of presenting information ensuring that users can easily find the information they are looking for. Harmonised EU wide procedures would be designed fully to be accessible for cross-border users. However, serious drawbacks of this option are the lack of feasibility due to little support from the Member States for such a centralised approach. In addition, the overall efficiency of this option is not very high since it combines very high costs with significant duplication.

Option 2 scores well for all three criteria, especially coherence (100%) and efficiency (88%). It has no low scores for any of the aspects assessed. It provides sufficient guarantees of enforceability thanks to the use of a common user feedback tool for coverage and quality monitoring. This option will rely more than the other two on very close cooperation between the Commission and the Member States.

Option 1 scores high on coherence (90%) and quite good on efficiency (71%), but not good enough on effectiveness (60%). This is mostly due to the significant drawbacks of leaving the roll-out of online procedures voluntary for the Member States and of the lack of a common solution for the problem of cross-border use of documents for procedures. Furthermore, the lack of findability will not be sufficiently addressed since the search facilities on the national business portals will in principle not cater for search in all EU languages. Finally, the lack of a common monitoring tool for quality will make enforcement of the quality criteria more cumbersome. For these reasons, it is unlikely that the needs of the users identified would be met with this option.

For a more detailed explanation of costs and benefits, timing and ease of implementation of option 1, please refer to sections 6.1.10-6.1.12, for option 2: 6.2.10-6.2.12, and for option 3: 6.3.8.-6.3.10.

The scores against these criteria are 1 for low, 2 for medium and 3 for high. The overall scores are expressed as a percentage of the maximum score for the relevant criterion.

-Alignment: is the option in line with the policy objectives of the Single Market and other initiatives?

-Proportionality: does it ensure that we do not spend too much effort on less important elements?

-Feasibility: can it be implemented across the board also taking account of different levels in IT development, centralised and decentralised administrative structures? Is there sufficient support among the Member States?

-Enforceability: can we monitor results and do we have instruments to make sure it will work? How will it prevent mistakes we made in the past?

-Digitalisation: are we making the best use of digital possibilities today and in the near future?

-Usefulness: is this what our users (including SMEs and start-ups) really need? Can we make sure we will still be aligned with the user needs in ten years from now?

All elements of each of the three option packages are assessed against the following criteria:

Businesses from third countries looking for online information on EU Member States' rules and requirements will benefit from increased online provision of information to the same degree as EU businesses when they are established in the EU. This may contribute to an increase in exports (of products compliant with EU and national rules) to the EU market as well as more investment.

The lower the entry barrier to doing business in another Member State is, the easier it is for firms to provide their goods and services in other countries. This should increase the volume of trade and competition in the Single Market. According to a study , firms that are active across borders introduce innovative products, services and processes more often than firms that are not active internationally.

The single digital gateway would facilitate SMEs access to the Single Market by significantly reducing the transaction costs for providing services or selling goods in other Member States. Just over half (52%) of all SMEs say the administrative procedures when exporting are too complicated, with 24% saying this has been a major problem. Better access to the Single Market will lead to greater economies of scale and scope and thus enhanced firm-level competitiveness and cost efficiencies.

By facilitating cross-border trade in goods and services, and by facilitating citizens’ ability to work and study in other Member States, the single digital gateway has the potential to enhance labour mobility and support citizens' fundamental right to free movement in the EU. Lower barriers to mobility can improve educational opportunities and social cohesion. These have second-order effects on patterns of economic development, productivity and mobility for work and living.

A promotion budget of EUR 50 million would also be required at EU level, as well as almost the same amount for the development of the harmonised procedures. Politically, it appears unfeasible to get the Member States to agree to changing the substance of their most important national procedures. Overall, this option would be difficult to implement.

This option would be costly for the Commission and Member States, as it would be necessary to duplicate the information available through the central EU database on their own national portals. Member States would, in addition to their national portal content, need to provide the central contractor with information in line with harmonised templates and validate edited content. The EU budget necessary for developing the database and content would be considerable. In addition, a budget and resources would need to be foreseen every year for running and updating the database.

All the rest could be done under an EU budget line and the Commission work programme. A four-year period is estimated to be necessary for hiring the contractor through a call for tender (one year), the development of the IT architecture, the database and harmonised content templates and content management system (one year), collecting content from Member States according to a harmonised template, final verification and translation (two years). This means that, with the exception of the 20 procedures part which would be implemented a year earlier, this option could be achieved by end 2021.

For this option a legal instrument would only be necessary for the part of the 10+10 procedures. The regulation (covering the 20 procedures and the integrated user interface for cross-border use of documents and data) could be adopted at the end of 2018 and implemented two years later, at the end of 2020. A number of implementing acts would also need to be adopted and implemented during this period.

For 9 procedures, the cost savings for cross-border business users would be EUR 174 million, split up into: EUR 11 m for collecting documents from authorities, 55 m in document certification costs, 60 m in translation costs, and 48 million in non-electronic submission costs.

For the 9 topics that businesses typically research when expanding their activities across borders, they would save between EUR 4.4 and 50.4 billion annually.

Citizens would save 75% of the time they currently spend looking up online six essential topics about their rights and obligations in order to live, study or retire in another Member State.

The table below shows the user benefits that could be calculated. These do not cover the entire solutions foreseen, and only give an "idea" of potential user benefits. The real user benefits could be much higher.

Apart from the 20 procedures, there would not be a requirement on Member States to make online procedures fully accessible for foreign users. Overall, for procedures the benefits for the total user population would thus be limited.

The option would also provide clear benefits for the cross-border user for the assumed 20 procedures to be harmonised. Most likely, foreign users would not need to pay for translations and certification of their documents (though this would be subject to an implementing act with its own impact assessment), and would benefit from e-submission of documents and data for the 20 procedures. According to a study underpinning the impact assessment, for nine investigated business procedures, cross-border users face EUR 174 million in additional costs as compared to domestic users for the same procedures (see table below). However, these benefits would not apply to the domestic business user, making up more than 95% of the total business user population.

The user benefits are extensive under this option as far as completeness of information is concerned. The harmonised structure of the database would ensure optimal comparability of the information across Member States, as well as very good findability through the single search facility. The information would be of high quality, as the EU could require this contractually. A single user feedback tool in all EU languages would ensure that all users could provide feedback, which the Commission would analyse to monitor compliance. Information could be offered in more than one EU language, depending on the budget available.

All 10+10 procedures will be harmonised at EU level for foreign users (such as for EPC and Services Card); EC will develop IT structure for procedures within IMI

EUR 74 per information need that can be answered by online information instead of an individual enquiry

No need to ensure quality of information or of procedures since this will be handled at EU level

This element is common to all options. For a description of its impact see section 6.1.9.

A disadvantage of this approach is that it may not be possible to adapt the format, style and message of the promotion adequately to the very specific national needs and circumstances. In addition, there may be duplication with national efforts to promote their own national portals linked to the single digital gateway.

As a saving, the current budgets for promotion of existing EU level services to be integrated in the single digital gateway could be largely reduced. The advantage of this option would be that awareness raising can be done in an even manner across the EU, also covering countries and regions where currently no awareness raising activities are undertaken.

If all Member States had to be targeted at the same time (as would be appropriate at the launch of the single digital gateway), a budget of more than EUR 50 million would be needed.

This option requires an annually agreed EU budget contained in the Single Market governance tools budget line. To ensure adequate coverage of all Member States and cater for all languages, the budget would need to be quite substantial. As a benchmark, the ongoing 'Open for business campaign' has an annual budget of EUR 5 million. It reaches out to all businesses but only in five countries every year. For the single digital gateway the same approach could be adopted but it would also need to include citizens. This would increase the costs to EUR 10 million per year.

The benefits of this option come from coordinating all promotion actions into campaigns under a common brand name. The joint promotion efforts are financed from the EU budget and thus the Member States can make savings, if they are currently promoting their services.

There would be no extra costs for making procedures accessible for foreign users, as they would be especially designed to accommodate foreign users.

This option would require translation of all content into English and possibly into all EU languages, considering that the service would be centrally coordinated by the EC. This would represent a clear advantage for users, since they could access information in their own language. The translation costs for the Commission would amount to an initial cost of EUR 1 million for English only, and EUR 23 million for translation in all EU languages. Annual costs for updates would be around half these amounts.

Like option 2, option 3 also includes the development of a common user interface for cross border use of documents and data. In this case it would be integrated in the centralised interface. For its impacts, see section 6.1.6.

The harmonisation of the assumed 20 online procedures would constitute a clear advantage for cross-border citizens and businesses, since it would provide them with a single interface, available in all EU languages. The costs for the Commission of implementing this approach, modelled on the European Professional Card and the planned e-Services Card, would be approximately EUR 44 million, for business analysis and IT development costs (based on the estimated cost of 2.2 million for the e-services card). Costs for the Member States would be limited to their involvement in agreeing on the business requirements for each of the new EU wide procedures.

The monitoring of compliance with harmonised quality criteria would be based on user feedback, but still will require the deployment of resources within the Commission. It estimated that 1 FTE would be needed to monitor compliance.

The Commission needs to design, build and maintain the database and its interface. The budgetary and other resource implications are considerable. A recent study looking into the creation of a centralised portal for VAT rules and procedures produced an estimate of EUR 500 000 for gathering, editing, validating and translating (into English only) all of the necessary content . This is complemented by annual operation cost for updating of around EUR 150 000. On the basis of these figures, the estimated cost for a centralised database of the size required for all topics to be covered by the single digital gateway would be around EUR 8 million to establish (content only) and EUR 2.4 million annually for keeping it up to date.

Information on the same topics is duplicated on the national level and in this centralised database, potentially creating confusion for the users.

For Member States synergies with information already on national portals and websites would be better lost. Even if the Commission outsources the content management for a central database to an external contractor, the latter will still need to get in touch with all relevant authorities in the Member States to gather the necessary material according to harmonised templates and then ask for validation of the edited content. This therefore demands additional resources at Member State level too.

This option complements the obligation of providing information with a central database that facilitates the search by offering a fully harmonised presentation of information, as there is no need to combine information from a multitude of sources. Users would have easier, centralised access to comparably structured information.

Member States that are not very advanced with e-government may need to make a substantial effort to fully digitalise the assumed 20 national procedures. However, EU structural funds can support the implementation in those Member States that have indicated this as a priority in their operational programmes. Likewise, translation into English can be paid for through an EU budget line.

This option would be relatively easy for Member States to implement as far as completeness of information and findability are concerned. Member States would need to cover the information gap, provide accurate descriptions of assistance services where these do not yet exist, and introduce links to relevant information into a common repository. The Commission would have the task of developing the common search facility and common user interface for cross-border use of documents and data, which would require implementing acts, a budget and human resources. However, practical work on the common user interface for cross-border use of documents and data has already started through a (voluntary) Commission-financed pilot in which 20 Member States are participating. The common user feedback tool in all languages would be relatively easy to develop and to deploy on all portals.

The time necessary for this option would be two years, i.e. until the end of 2020 if the regulation is adopted by the end of 2018.

For nine procedures, the cost savings for cross-border business users would be EUR 126 million, split up into: EUR 11 m for collecting documents from authorities, 55 m in document certification costs, 60 m in translation costs.

For nine procedures, the potential cost savings from digital document submission for all EU business users would be in the magnitude of EUR 7 billion (made up of: 6.5 billion for domestic users, and 48.1 million for cross-border users in current costs from "in person" or "by post" carrying out of the procedures).

For the nine topics that businesses typically research when expanding their activities across borders, they would save between EUR 4 and 48 billion annually.

Citizens would save 60% of the 1.5 million hours they currently spend looking up online six essential topics about their rights and obligations in order to live, study or retire in another Member State.

The table below shows the user benefits that could be calculated. These do not cover the entire solutions foreseen, and only give an "idea" of potential user benefits. The real user benefits would be much higher.

A common user feedback tool in all EU languages would facilitate especially the foreign user’s quality monitoring and would thereby possibly lead to higher quality services also accommodating his needs.

The user benefits from the obligatory digitalisation of 20 core national procedures would also be significant, saving the user a lot of cost, time and hassle that he would otherwise have to incur, e.g. when required to come to an office or to send documents by post. A study on business procedures carried out to underpin this impact assessment concluded that for 9 procedures, the cost savings for all EU businesses - if e-procedures were introduced where missing - would be in the order of magnitude of EUR 7 billion. The common user interface for cross-border use of documents and data is expected to decrease the burden of translation and certification of documents, but this is at this stage difficult to quantify as subject to the outcome of a pilot and a future implementing act with its own impact assessment.

The user benefits would be considerable under this option as far as completeness of information and its findability is concerned. The common search facility could provide information covering all Member States through one search request, saving the user a lot of time otherwise spent on various national portals. Search terms could be inserted in all EU languages, which would greatly increase findability and general user-friendliness.

For 9 of the 10 business procedures, the cost savings per MS would be EUR 4 m . No figures available for the remaining 11 procedures

EUR 74 per information need that can be answered by online information instead of an individual enquiry

+ Reduction of administrative burden due to no further need to check validity and authenticity of documents

+ More enquiries can be met by online information, fewer enquiries to be addressed to Your Europe Advice

This element is common to all options. For a description of its impact see section 6.1.9.

The links to national webpages will need to be included in a common repository to allow the search facility to use the closed set of approved EU and national webpages that are part of the single digital gateway. Such a repository can be created within IMI by using the existing generic building blocks at an estimated cost of EUR 75 000.

The cost estimates for the development of a search-based tool for linking to and re-using information on the national portals is estimated at EUR 500 000 for a more sophisticated solution, including the common assistance service finder. As there is an alternative where the costs of the integrated search engine would accrue per search, around EUR 350 000 in yearly licencing fees would need to be foreseen.

Coordinated promotion is part of both options 1 and 2. For a detailed analysis of impacts of this element, see section 6.1.8.

Barring full integration of contact points (as in option 1), a requirement to at least introduce a common front office for services catering for the same target audience, would go a long way in reducing confusion among the users about where to go with which question. This can be done through a common assistance services finder that automatically guides the users to the right service. Costs for developing such a tool are around EUR 100 000 and there are important savings for the administration due to joined use of resources and reduced need for signposting users individually to the right service.

A possible technical solution for such a tool could build on IMI, in particular the existing repository for the European Professional Card. The estimated development costs for a generic IT tool based on IMI would be between EUR 0.5 and 1 million. Member States would need to ensure interconnection with existing databases or in their absence foresee manual uploading of e-documents or data by the relevant authorities. However, other technical solutions are also possible, taking account of the experience with the ongoing once-only pilot project. In the absence of a preferred technical solution today, it is not possible to give a reliable cost figure. Any such technical solution would need to be implemented through a secondary act with a separate impact assessment.

Option 2 also includes the development of a common user interface for cross border use of documents and data. A main bottleneck for cross-border transactionality of online procedures is indeed the lack of acceptance of electronic supporting evidence (documents or data submitted as proof) in cross-border situations. Authenticity of such evidence and language aspects can be problematic. While at national level the once-only principle has already reduced the need for continuous resubmission of the same documents or data, such solutions exist today only at a very small scale at EU level (for instance for the European Professional Card, where a solution has been implemented through IMI). Other solutions are being tested as part of an ongoing pilot project. This option would require the development of a common interface enabling citizens and businesses to manage access to evidence (documents or data) in cross border situations. It would also facilitate the evolution towards fully transactional cross-border procedures.

In option 2, like in option 1, all national procedures that are already available online would need to be fully cross-border transactional. For the impact of this element, see section 6.1.6.

Option 2, like option 1 would require translation of the agreed content within the remit of the single digital gateway into at least one other language (most usefully in English). For the impact of these elements cf. section 6.1.5.

Many Member States have made e-government a priority of their operational programmes for ESIF, which could provide the right financial framework to implement the roll-out of online procedures.

Some savings can be made in costs associated with the digitalisation of procedures if public authorities use the tools at their disposal for increasing interoperability such as the European Interoperability Framework.

The case examples provided by the Member States as part of the stakeholder consultation, all demonstrate that whatever IT approach is chosen, the costs of moving procedures on-line are greatly outweighed by the savings generated by digitalisation, especially if this is done in a coordinated way across the different parts of the administration.

The costs of moving procedures online vary widely depending on the complexity of the procedure, the availability of existing procedure infrastructure, whether we are talking about both front end (user interface) or both front end and back office (subsequent processing of the data by the administrations involved), and the possibility to use ready-made building blocks. To be on the safe side, the estimated cost of making one procedure available online (€600 000) is a very conservative high-end estimate, based on a complex procedure (tax returns), assuming no procedure infrastructure, automating both the front end and the back office, and assuming no savings from ready-made components. This means that the cost figures overestimate the direct costs implied by the proposed single digital gateway, which will only require the digitalisation of the front end, not the much more complex back office.

It is difficult to give a meaningful figure for replacing an existing off-line procedure by an on-line version without considering the very specific context of each Member State. Where generic IT platforms have been developed, the marginal cost of digitalising a new procedure will be relatively low. Ireland has outsourced the provision of the IT platform for on-line licensing procedures to a private company which now offers the platform to all municipalities for a per transaction fee. Cyprus and Denmark have also developed such platforms.

This option will require Member States to offer the assumed 20 most frequently used procedures for businesses and citizens fully online. Already today on average 55% of the procedures to be included in the digitalisation effort under this option are already fully online while another 26% are partly online. The situation varies significantly between the different Member States (see section 2.2.3) and the remaining gaps would need to be closed by a deadline to be agreed. This work can be fully integrated in the e-government and ICT actions already envisaged by Member States and funded through the ESIF (see Table 6.5).

The 2016 e-government benchmark study reported that 25% of the procedures required for foreign entrepreneurs to start their business in another country are completely off-line. In contrast, entrepreneurs starting a business in their own country face such issues in only 2% of the cases. Solving this problem as proposed in this option, would therefore have a very significant impact on the internal market business environment for start-ups.

Like option 1, option 2 requires an agreement on quality criteria (cf. impact section 6.1.3). The main difference is in the monitoring of compliance that will be done jointly by the EC and MS. In that respect, a common user feedback tool will have to be put in place to provide input for monitoring compliance with the quality criteria, information coverage and user friendliness of all services provided through the single digital gateway. Such a tool can be developed within the existing Your Europe content management system at an estimated cost of EUR 40 000.

This option does not require MS to establish single portals and leaves them free to organise content as they see fit, allowing flexibility to adapt the governance to the specific administrative organisation of each country.

Option 2 includes a legally binding obligation on Member States to provide all information citizens and businesses need to operate within the Single Market online, as does option 1. The impacts of this element of the option are analysed in section 6.1.1.

Member States would need to allocate human resources for quality monitoring and for making online procedures fully accessible to foreign users. However, as pointed out in section 6.1.6., the latter only requires limited additional work.

Member States would need to provide user feedback tools and search facilities on their portals. This is relatively easy to implement and most Member States have this already.

The merger of the contact points is a REFIT Platform business stakeholder proposal, and Member States were advised to consider the integration of online information on goods with that of the Points of Single Contact at an operational level. One Member State has found this problematic as it would interfere with the administrative organisation of services. More generally, this would require internal coordination work and some IT development.

This option would be relatively easy to implement and would potentially cause difficulties for only two Member States that do not yet have citizen portals. The voluntary nature of the roll- out of online procedures would leave full flexibility and decision-making power with Member States.

The time needed for implementing this option is calculated as two years. If the regulation were to enter into force at the end of 2018, the implementation would last to the end of 2020. This would enable Member States to voluntarily roll out as many online procedures as possible, merge the contact points for services, products and construction products. The two Member States that do not have portals would need to put them in place within this timeframe. The Commission would need to adopt a number of implementing acts, develop the repository of links, a data collection tool and the reporting tool on the functioning of the Single Market.

For nine procedures, the potential cost savings for all EU business users would thus be in the magnitude of EUR 3.5 billion.

It is impossible to calculate this with any degree of certainty under a voluntary scenario, but the general Commission experience in this case is that Member States will do less than under a mandatory scenario. The assumption made for this benefit calculation is that Member States will do half of what the mandatory option 2 element foresees, resulting in half of the user benefits of option 2.

For the nine topics that businesses typically research when expanding their activities across borders, they would save between EUR 3.5 and 46 billion annually.

Citizens would save 50% of the 1.5 million hours they currently spend looking up online six essential topics about their rights and obligations in order to live, study or retire in another Member State.

The table below shows the user benefits that could be calculated. These do not cover the entire solutions foreseen, and only give an "idea" of potential user benefits. The real user benefits could be much higher.

The user benefits from the voluntary roll-out of online procedures are impossible to calculate, as Member States could decide to be very ambitious, or do nothing at all. For the cost and benefit calculation for Member States, the assumption has been that under the voluntary scenario, Member States will on average do less than under an obligatory scenario. This would reduce the user benefits accordingly. ‘National solutions for use of documents and data to be made accessible for foreign users’ would achieve non-discriminatory access of foreign users, but would not reduce their additional burden in terms of translation and certification of documents.

Option 1 provides considerable benefits for users as far as the completeness of EU and national information is concerned. However, as there would be no common search facility covering all the websites that make up the gateway, a user would either need to search for information on every national portal individually, or access national portals via Your Europe. Furthermore, the search engine on national portals would only be in the national language making a search potentially very difficult for foreign users. National user feedback tools would also only be in the national language, which would make it more difficult for foreign users to submit feedback, and for the Commission to feed it into a global gateway quality monitoring system. The merger of the three national business contact point networks would make a search somewhat easier on a national level.

For 9 of the 10 business procedures, the cost savings per MS are assumed to be 50% of option 2, i.e. EUR 2 m per MS. No figures available for the remaining 11 procedures.

Quality criteria with monitoring via separate user feedback tools, one for each linked portal; EC and MS all monitor their own compliance

EUR 74 per information need that can be answered by online information instead of an individual enquiry ; fewer resources needed for development and maintenance of many different websites and portals

The Commission covers EU level information in Your Europe; MS cover agreed national information in single national business and citizens portals; The Commission and MS all monitor their own compliance

Get overview of all problems reported by other users; influence the further development of the Single Market; get their voice heard

Moderate promotion budget and management costs, estimated at EUR 2m for the launch of the gateway, and EUR 0.5m for subsequent years.

+ If implemented, improvement in handling compliance with national rules, especially in cross-border situations leading to considerable savings of time, effort and money.

Reduced need for all parts of the administration to invent their own solutions for content and quality management

Completing EU level information for businesses where missing, managing and keeping it up to date (part of ongoing work in the Your Europe Portal

The data should in principle also be published on the EU Open Data Portal to make it available for further research and re-use by third parties where possible, facilitated by the use of common data structures.

The resulting data need to be combined with data currently gathered through SOLVIT, EEN, Your Europe Advice, European Consumer Centres and by national assistance services and it should be analysed systematically. This could lead to very important savings on the EU budget currently spent on studies since a large part of this expenditure is on gathering very basic data about experiences of citizens and business in the single market.

While no direct and individual reply or follow-up will be provided to firms and citizens, they will be able to see the overall picture of problems collected through the tool. Furthermore, SOLVIT and Your Europe Advice will be signposted in case they would like to provide more details of their problem. The data gathered via the tool would provide additional input for policy makers in identifying and addressing problem areas of the Single Market. The development costs for such a tool are estimated at EUR 150 000.

This benefits firms and citizens as they can report problems with rules and public authorities in an easy and familiar way in all EU languages. The tool created for the collection of data can save time, by for example closed-form questions which can be answered quickly.

The single digital gateway creates an opportunity to systematically gather non-personal data from many different sources to provide a richer picture of the state of the Single Market, based on how its users experience it in practice. This also offers additional material for evaluations and impact assessments.

The Member States have to adjust their promotion efforts so that there is a common brand reference in all contexts, with a possibility of co-branding the single digital gateway with national initiatives. Coordinating the promotion efforts would be part of the overall management effort for the single digital gateway.

Promotion should essentially be done online and should also include search engine optimisation. The current budget for promoting Your Europe is around EUR 450 000 per year. In addition, EU-wide promotion campaigns for citizens' rights, consumer rights and business opportunities also refer to Your Europe. As a new service for citizens and businesses, the single digital gateway will need to be promoted intensively at its launch both directly to establish the new brand and indirectly to ensure that users quickly find their way to it. An additional one-off promotion budget of around EUR 2 million would be needed. Annual promotion work at EU level would require a further EUR 500 000.

The increased visibility facilitates the findability and access of firms and citizens to information sources and procedures concerning the Single Market, making it easier to operate in markets or move across borders.

A coordinated promotion with co-branding implies that any national promotion efforts of the services covered by the gateway should always include a reference to the gateway as a whole. This increases the visibility of the single digital gateway both for businesses and citizens.

A merger of the existing contact points for services, products and construction products would help to improve the overall findability and quality of the services provided. This model has been successfully implemented in the UK and Lithuania. In the public consultation 81% of business were in favour of a merger between the contact points for services and those for goods. Among public authority respondents 70% considered such a merger desirable, but difficult (28%) or somewhat difficult (48%). However, the feedback received through bilateral meetings with Member States' representatives suggest that a mandatory merger requirement would be quite problematic for some in view of national administrative structures.

Making existing procedures cross-border transactional will not entail any major additional costs for the Member States under this option (other than those already incurred under the eIDAS regulation). However, given the current problems with access to national procedures for non-nationals and the absence of clear national quality guidelines to achieve this, some extra resources must be dedicated to the task. Depending on their starting point, each Member State should assign up to 1 FTE for a full year to examine current problems, write internal guidelines for compliance with the single digital gateway requirements in this area, and supervise their implementation by the different national authorities.

-For the cross-border acceptance of e-documents further work is needed to develop and implement cross-border once-only solutions. Such work is in any case ongoing under other programmes (see Annex 9 for details of the once-only pilot) in view of the need for cross-border acceptance of e-documents for a wide range of other initiatives and taking account of the once-only principle. The associated costs are not part of the single digital gateway and such projects need a separate impact assessment.

-Adding payment facilities generally accessible for foreign users does in principle not entail any additional costs and any such costs could be recuperated directly.

-Costs for adapting form fields to accept contact details, such as addresses and phone numbers from other Member States are very low.

-Accepting eIDs will become obligatory under the eIDAS Regulation as of 2018. The technical building blocks required for its implementation have been developed under the CEF programme. So these costs should not be attributed to the creation of the single digital gateway.

-Solutions to ensure that foreign users have the possibility to access procedures in English, either by translating forms in English (very low cost solution), or by integrating an explanatory guide, depending on the basic IT structure of the procedure. One cost example was provided by Cyprus where the annual fee for maintaining 93 e-procedures in two languages is around EUR 20 000.

Around 39% of all procedures to be covered by the single digital gateway are already cross-border transactional. For the remaining 61% additional work is needed:

In addition to the translation costs, managing web content in more than one language also requires an adapted content management system. However, experience with the Points of Single Contact and with the national portals feeding into Your Europe shows that all Member States already have content management systems equipped to handle two or more languages (see also section 2.2.3).

To ensure that foreign users have access to national information, the agreed content within the remit of the single digital gateway would need to be translated into at least one other language in addition to the national languages (most usefully in English). Taking an estimated 500 pages of web text as a basis for the overall volume of pages to be translated, translation costs would amount to EUR 32 500 (EUR 65 per page ) per Member State. The annual cost for translation of new content would be around half that amount, namely EUR 16 250 (based on Your Europe experience). However, these costs will not be additional costs for all Member States, since many of them already provide information in at least one other language. Costs for translations in English could be covered through EU funding.

Voluntary roll out of online procedures would in principle entail the same costs and benefits as obligatory digitalisation (see impact of option 2, section 6.2.3), but within this option each Member State could ultimately decide not to digitalise any procedures thus keeping both the costs and benefits at zero. In view of the significant benefits digitalisation creates for the running costs of administrations, it is unlikely that no digitalisation would take place. However, in a voluntary scenario, the risk of uneven development and considerable delays would be relatively high, even within a framework to coordinate at EU level. Moreover, it could undermine the overall credibility and relevance of the portal in the eyes of its users, making it less useful.

Experience with existing services (SOLVIT, Your Europe Advice and the Your Europe portal) shows that once a quality framework is agreed, very good results can be achieved by devoting between 5% and 35% of the total management effort to quality monitoring and improvement.

Direct implementing costs involve setting up a practical framework for monitoring compliance with quality criteria and for enforcing a good level of quality across the board. This will help to generate more added value from expenses already made. Ensuring compliance with the quality requirements will be one of the tasks of the national single digital gateway coordinator, and at EU level the Commission will need to ensure the same. For this purpose extra resources need to be included as part of the overall management costs of the preferred option package. This will involve a user feedback tool with an estimated development cost of EUR 40 000.

Adherence to a minimum list of quality criteria is not really an option but an essential element for the success of the single digital gateway, since providing information and assistance of variable and unreliable quality would seriously undermine the credibility of the single digital gateway as a whole.

All of the assistance services to be covered by the single digital gateway are either already required by existing EU law or paid from existing EU budgets. For both categories the objective of the single digital gateway is to provide good quality services. Experience (e.g. with SOLVIT) shows that improving the quality of the service is most often not a matter of adding resources but of assigning the right resources with the necessary skills to provide such services.

A legal requirement to establish single portals in all MS would in practice only create significant IT costs for a few Member States. However, the most difficult part of establishing single portals is not so much the IT investment but the major governance effort required to get all parts of the administration on board. Member States who have managed to achieve this, report that taming the internal silos has been a herculean task. Although all seem to agree that the end result represents very significant cost savings for the administration itself and, in any case, a major improvement for citizens and businesses, these obvious net benefits are not always enough to trigger the necessary administrative culture change.

A key element of this option consists of requiring Member States to create single citizens and business portals to host the content required under the single digital gateway. At present 26 Member States already have created such portals either for citizens and businesses separately or for both groups together. Only two Member States do not yet have such portals.

Moreover, the improved availability of information will considerably reduce the time and effort that citizens and businesses spend seeking information. The lack of such information creates frustration for users and firms often leading to them paying lawyers and consultants to get the information they need, which is especially onerous for SMEs.

In any case, these costs are likely to be more than compensated for by direct savings made due to many users being able to help themselves with information available on websites instead of turning to contact points with individual queries. This is illustrated by the example of the Your Europe portal that currently serves 13 million users per year. The web portal operates in cascade with the individualised Your Europe Advice service. It allows users who do not find the information they were looking for online to submit an individual request for advice and receive a reply by e-mail or telephone. Figures show that at current usage levels, providing a personal advice service is around 75 times more expensive than providing the same information online.

None of them is in that position, even the lowest performing Member States already covers around 40% of all information needed, while the best performing Member States covers 100%. The average coverage is around 70%, representing an estimated additional effort of around 80 person days on average per Member State.

The costs for providing this type of information have been assessed at 17 person days by a recent study for all information on (complex) VAT rules. For the single digital gateway, 16 such topics would need to be covered representing an effort of 272 person days per Member State. However, this would be the maximum cost if a Member State had to start from scratch.

If Member States would provide the same range of information about their national rules in their national web portals, they would be likely to comply with the basic requirements of this option.

The Your Europe portal can be used as a reasonable benchmark for the volume of national information to be provided, since it already covers all topics that are part of the envisaged scope of the single digital gateway. The most mature part of Your Europe is the citizens’ part, which currently includes the equivalent of 245 pages of EU level information for 163 topics. The business part currently covers 46 topics but could be expected to cover around the same number of topics as the citizens section, adding up to a comprehensive volume of content of around 500 pages.

The volume of information to be provided will also depend on the regulatory complexity of the Member State concerned. Information will in any case need to be succinct and user friendly, which should keep the volume down.

A legally binding obligation on Member States to provide all information citizens and businesses need to operate within the Single Market online would generate additional costs for Member States, depending on how much information is already available through national portals. For some Member States the gap will be very small, for others a very significant effort is needed.

The 20 procedures are fully accessible to cross-border users by design. An integrated user interface for the cross-border use of documents and data is foreseen.

It makes information and guidance on procedures available in all or several EU official languages.

Introduces a requirement to harmonise at EU level the 10+10 procedures for foreign users. The Commission is required to develop the IT structure for procedures within IMI.

The Commission provides all agreed information online. Member States help providing this information according to harmonised templates, and verify it prior to publication. The Commission monitors compliance.

This option ensures that all promotion actions are joint and based on a common single brand name, financed through the EU budget. To achieve all the benefits of the single digital gateway, it is necessary to ensure effective search engine findability of the entry point and all the underlying services.

-A requirement for Member States and the Commission to promote all information, procedures and services under the same brand name in a coordinated fashion;

Thanks to the fully centralised and harmonised approach of option 3, there should be no problem of findability of any of the information. The database will include a search engine and an intuitive navigation path, but no additional requirements are needed to address findability.

This option will guarantee full accessibility for foreign users by design, but only for the 20 procedures. All information about national rules will be translated in English and a large part of the information will be translated in all EU languages. The 20 procedures would be fully accessible for foreign users and the interface would be available in all languages, just as is the case for the European Professional Card.

This is an ambitious option that would require harmonisation of access for foreign users to the most relevant procedures. This approach would offer businesses and citizens a single access point to those procedures, especially designed to accommodate foreign users and integrating back office cooperation between national authorities where needed. This approach would follow the model of the European Professional Card and use the Internal Market Information system as a basis. Delegated acts would foresee the technical details of the system.

-For the Commission to develop and manage the IT applications for these procedures.

-For the Member States and the Commission to create harmonised EU wide procedures, modelled on the European Professional Card, for the 10+10 procedures identified in option 2.

The quality criteria agreed in this option are the same as those for options 1 and 2, but the monitoring of compliance would be done centrally through a user feedback mechanism integrated in the central database. The Commission would ensure that the quality criteria are met.

-For the Commission to ensure that all information and assistance services and online procedures linked to the single digital gateway comply with a minimum set of quality criteria, to be monitored essentially via user feedback.

This option would ensure uniformity in coverage and presentation and would provide a simple and coherent access to information. It would make data easily findable and comparable across Member States.

This option would add to option 1 a harmonised presentation of all information through a centralised database. Information on national rules would be collected in this database (as is done currently in the EU Export Helpdesk) instead of reusing existing information available on national websites. The database would then be made available through the single digital gateway.

For the Member States to provide content according to harmonised templates and to verify and validate national information collected by the Commission.

For the Commission to create and manage (or outsource to an external contractor) a centralised database with an interface for users and generate the content to cover an agreed range of information (as in options 1 and 2);

The main characteristic of this option is that the Commission would provide all EU and national-level information through a central database on the EU level. The option would not prescribe putting the 20 core procedures online, but would foresee the establishment of a special IT tool to allow the back office cooperation of home and host country authorities to accommodate the needs (mainly in terms of submission of evidence) of the foreign user. "Findability" of information and procedures would be easy on the central database. A common assistance finder (same as option 2) would help find assistance services.

Requires the creation of a common feedback tool about Single Market obstacles to be linked to from each website.

Makes information and guidance on procedures available in English and makes sure that online procedures already available are accessible to users from other Member States. It creates a common user interface for the cross-border use of documents and data.

Requires Member States and the EC to provide information on a list of topics and to jointly monitor their compliance in offering the agreed information. The EC and Member State pages are linked.

At national and EU level, such assistance service finding tools or wizards for a limited range of services have already been integrated. This helps the users to find the right assistance service even in a very complex landscape and it avoids these services receiving too many queries that should have been addressed to other assistance services.

For the Member States to ensure that the basic information about the assistance services is available to ensure good functioning of the tool.

For the Commission to develop a common tool that will guide the users to the right assistance service.

An alternative to a fully harmonised presentation of information (as in option 3) is to make sure that users can easily find information, services and procedures through a search facility that is limited to the content specifically earmarked as part of the single digital gateway. This content may need to be tagged with the right search words to improve the quality of the package presented to a user search request. Some basic harmonisation of the identification of public services may be needed to improve their findability. The search facility does not require the creation of a new portal, but can be integrated as part of the EU and national information portals and webpages.

For the Commission to provide a search facility combined with navigation tools for various topics to guide the users.

A solution is needed to make it possible to submit documents required for procedures in the scope of the single digital gateway. This includes supporting evidence in the form of authenticated documents or data, as part of a procedure across borders. There are various solutions how procedures can be linked with registers held by competent authorities. Problems to be solved include the issues of language, permissions, and linkages to online procedures. In most cases a fully online procedure would in most cases need this tool and a solution will be part of the user centric service offered through the single digital gateway. This option does not address the recognition of the substance of the evidence.

The first and second requirement of this option are the same as for option 1. The requirement for the use of cross-border evidence is more ambitious.

–For competent authorities in the Member States managing base registers (where national data from citizens are kept) to make their systems interoperable with the common user interface.

–For the Commission to develop a common user interface to manage the provision of evidence across borders to implement the 'once only' principle.

–For Member States to provide all information that is part of the single digital gateway in one other commonly used language. EU funding will be made available for translations into English.

These procedures have been identified as being important for businesses and citizens, especially in a cross-border context, based on various studies and the public consultation . The work to make core procedures available online will be aligned with other ongoing and planned EU initiatives.

–For Member States to move core procedures assumed to be, 10 for business and 10 for citizens (to be listed in the legal instrument) fully online (see section 1.4.2);

The quality criteria in this option are the same as those for option 1, but the compliance with the criteria will be monitored jointly by the Commission and the Member States through a common user feedback mechanism to ensure full comparability and coordinated action.

–For the Commission to develop a common user feedback mechanism to be used on all national and EU level websites and portals covered by the single digital gateway. Input will feed into a database that is accessible to the Commission and the Member States to enable joint monitoring.

For Member States and the Commission to ensure that all information and assistance services and online procedures linked to the single digital gateway meet a minimum quality standard, to be monitored on a regular basis via user feedback.

Regarding information coverage and scope this option is the same as option 1, but unlike option 1 it leaves the choice of offering this information through a single business and citizens portal or via a range of different portals to the Member States. All information portals will be inter-linked and findability should be ensured via a common search facility (see section 5.3.5).

–For Member States and the Commission to provide online EU and national level information about rights, rules and requirements applicable within an agreed range of areas that are relevant for citizens and businesses exercising their single market rights, as currently covered by Your Europe.

The main characteristic of this option is that Member States could choose where they provide the required information online. They would only need to provide the links to the relevant websites on a central Commission repository, from which a common search facility would pick them up and present them to the user in reply to a search. As part of this, an "assistance service finder" would be developed to guide users to the right assistance service. The search facility would be limited to the gateway content, and could be integrated on EU and national information portals and webpages. In terms of procedures, this option assumes that Member States are obliged to make 10 key procedures for businesses and 10 for citizens fully online.

Requires the creation of a common feedback tool about Single Market obstacles to be linked to from each website.

Introduces the coordinated promotion of the services offered and the merger of the national contact points for services and products.

Makes information and information about procedures available in English. Makes sure that procedures and national means to submit supporting evidence already available online are accessible to users from other Member States,.

Introduces the requirement to have user feedback tools for each national portal and to monitor compliance in meeting the quality criteria.

Requires Member States to create national single businesses and citizens portals (where these do not already exist), to provide national information on a list of topics, and to monitor their compliance in offering the agreed information. The Commission will cover EU level information in Your Europe. The two levels will be linked.

The tool will not be a formal complaint handling mechanism, nor will it offer individual replies or feedback (there will be signposting to SOLVIT for that). The received input would help to produce a good overview of the Single Market as perceived by users, identifying clear problem areas for possible future actions to improve its functioning.

In addition to data gathered through assistance and problem solving services, an easy-to-use online tool can encourage the users of the single digital gateway to indicate problems they encounter in the Single Market. The public consultation indicated that 76 % of respondents would be willing to give feedback on their experience with the Single Market, so as to draw policy-makers' attention to recurrent problems.

For Member States to collect data about the problems and queries submitted by citizens and businesses to the different services within the single digital gateway and to regularly submit it to the Commission;

For the Commission to provide a user feedback reporting tool that would allow it to identify problems with rules and difficulties encountered dealing with public authorities in an easy and familiar way in all EU languages;

Promotion will raise awareness of online services. Under this option all promotion efforts of services within the remit of the single digital gateway will always include a reference to the gateway as a whole. Member States and the Commission finance their respective promotion actions.

For Member States and the Commission to inform about, coordinate and where possible combine and synchronise promotion actions.

For Member States and the Commission to co-brand all promotion actions of the included services with the single digital gateway brand name.

Several Member States have already merged the services at least partially, and most public authorities consider it desirable (45%) or very desirable (25%) to integrate the services and goods contact points in one national portal, although most of them consider this integration somewhat difficult (48%) or difficult (28%). Members of the REFIT Platform Government Group recommend to the Commission to "(…) consider the integration of online information related to other contact points such as those falling under the Mutual Recognition Regulation, Construction Products Regulation and SOLVIT with that of the PSC; facilitate integration of information on online portals".

With a view to improving overall quality as well as findability, the various contact points created by EU law would be merged with a view to increasing awareness and findability of these services, but also to offer a more coherent assistance service to businesses and create economies of scale for the administrations involved.

For the cross-border acceptance of e-documents further efforts are needed to develop and implement cross-border once-only solutions. In this option Member States will only be required to make national solutions for documents, for instance e-messaging boxes and e-safes accessible for foreign users.

–Payment facilities need to include systems widely used in other Member States, including for instance the possibility to make a SEPA transfer.

–Form fields used in procedures will need to accept contact details, such as addresses and phone numbers from other Member States.

–Accepting eIDs will become obligatory under the eIDAS Regulation as of September 2018. The technical building blocks required for its implementation have been developed under the CEF programme (see Annex 11).

–Making procedures available in another language or providing step-by-step online guidance in another language. This can be implemented through various technical solutions, depending on the basic IT structure of the procedure.

All national procedures that are already available online would need to be fully cross-border transactional. In practice this will entail a range of practical elements:

For Member States to provide all information that is part of the single digital gateway in one other commonly used language. Funding will be made available for translations in to English.

In order to improve the availability of online service provision, this element uses a voluntary approach where the procedures to be introduced online are agreed separately for each Member State, respecting national priorities, but not necessarily leading to an even set of procedures across the Member States.

A governance structure for Member States and the Commission in order to discuss and identify which procedures would be offered fully online.

Quality criteria include basic explanations about purpose, deadlines and fees regarding assistance services and procedures. Systematic collection of user feedback will help to monitor compliance with quality standards and to identify problems and address them quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, each assistance service would need to keep records of numbers, origin and subject matter of requests, as well as of response times.

This element sets quality criteria for the information, assistance services and online procedures offered, including a requirement about the availability to provide them in at least one language that is also widely understandable for foreign users. This element builds on the existing quality criteria that are defined, for instance, for the Services Directive and the Points of Single Contact Charter, Your Europe Advice and SOLVIT.

For the Commission and the Member States to put in place their own user feedback mechanisms to cover their own single portals.

For Member States and the Commission to ensure that all information and assistance services and online procedures linked to the single digital gateway meet a minimum set of quality criteria, to be monitored via user feedback.

For goods, a new obligation will be introduced to provide information on national product rules online on a website. Member States will need to offer a summary of the applicable rules for product categories, but may also refer to the assistance services for more detailed information tailored to specific products. This follows good practices already adopted by many Member States. To complement this, the single digital gateway will link to the Technical Regulation Information System (TRIS) database and to the database of the EU Export Helpdesk.

For services, this option will complement the existing obligations under the Services Directive. The objective is to add areas not covered by the directive but recommended in the Charter of the Points of Single Contact. On the basis of user feedback, the information will be adapted as user needs develop and EU and national rules evolve.

The starting point for information coverage are issues already covered by the Your Europe services and the e-Justice portal. Member States and the Commission will continue to provide assistance through services mandated by the EU (see section 1.4.3), with Member States having the option to voluntarily include national assistance services under the single digital gateway. They will also have the option of including relevant complementary private or public-private assistance services.

Defining the scope of the information coverage based on users' needs is key to the success of the initiative. The scope of the information coverage would be defined as described below.

This option aims to ensure that enough high-quality information is available online for businesses and citizens, complemented where needed by high-quality individual assistance. Both information and assistance would have to be accessible through the same interface.

For both the Member States and the Commission to group this information within single business and citizens portals.

For Member States and the Commission respectively to provide online national and EU level information about rights, rules and requirements applicable within an agreed range of areas that are relevant for citizens and businesses exercising their single market rights, as currently covered by Your Europe.

The main characteristic of this option is that it prescribes a central information structure via single portals on the national and EU level, but takes a soft law approach with regard to the rollout of online procedures. It foresees no EU solution for accepting documents and data from other Member States. Each Member State should merge the three main business contact points (for services and goods).

–All 10+10 procedures will be harmonised at EU level for foreign users (such as for EPC and Services Card)

The preferred package of options will result from their comparison in Section 6 of this document.

All three options are structured to address each of the six problems identified. The description of the relevant elements within each of the options will be presented in line with that structure. Some elements are the same for two or all three of the options.

Table 5.1 shows the three options and their various elements, and how they relate to the problem drivers, problems and objectives.

–Option 3: EU wide fully harmonised approach, based on a resolution of the European Parliament calling for a single end-to-end digital process for businesses to set up and operate across the EU, covering many fields. This option would centralise information provision and harmonise procedures at EU level for foreign users.

–Option 1: National centralised business and citizens portals, is based on the concept of a network of single digital gateways, as proposed by 17 Member States in a letter of September 2015 to the Commission;

Apart from the baseline option of no further action as described in section 2.6, three option packages are included for analysis:

-Awareness about the services on offer is increased and information and assistance services are easy to find and well-coordinated;

-Information about EU rights and national rules and procedures that citizens and businesses need to exercise their Single Market rights is available online;

The initiative addresses the removal of obstacles in terms of information availability, access to e-procedures and use of assistance services cross-border and online. By reducing transaction costs for information gathering and administrative procedures, it will encourage citizens and businesses to exercise their Single Market rights.

The overall policy objective is to facilitate the efficient functioning of the Single Market by reducing or removing existing barriers to cross-border business activity and mobility of citizens. Helping citizens, SMEs and start-ups to benefit from the Single Market will boost competition, jobs and growth.

The EU added value of the single digital gateway is that it will reduce fragmentation by expanding the good practices already established in many areas to the overall service package to be provided to EU citizens and businesses. The initiative will not touch the substance of the policy areas for which information needs to be provided, it will only require MS to create full transparency about their applicable rules. This is an essential requirement for letting EU citizens and businesses do business, work, study and travel in the Single Market.

The type of provisions envisaged for the single digital gateway is not new either. Similar requirements were already included in sectorial instruments such as the Services Directive (including provisions on online information, quality, assistance and online procedures), Professional Qualifications Directive (with provisions on online information, assistance and online procedures), Cross-border Health Care Directive (with provisions on information and assistance), and the EURES Regulation (with provisions on information, assistance and quality).

Within the single digital gateway, Member States would still be in charge of providing information about their specific national context. Coordination at EU level, an agreed set of common quality criteria and a requirement to ensure full accessibility for foreign users, would make sure that information, procedures and assistance services are of comparable quality and fully accessible for non-national EU citizens, leading to better enforcement of Single Market rights for citizens and businesses.

Moreover, so far individual actions by Member States have led to considerable differences in approach, and such differences impose additional costs on firms, in particular SMEs, when operating in cross-border situations and discourage many from scaling up internationally.

These objectives cannot be achieved sufficiently without action at EU level. As described above, the current system of information and assistance services lacks coherence since the instruments, which were created by EU level action, are not sufficiently linked up and not sufficiently user-friendly. A common approach to ensuring quality through minimum quality standards is missing. Whilst the legal framework promotes synergies, these have not been sufficiently exploited by the Member States (in the absence of binding obligations).

The Single Market is not an area with fully harmonised rules. Beyond the basic principles and the areas in which fully harmonised rules were agreed, citizens and businesses will still need to comply with national rules whenever they exercise their Single Market rights. Therefore it is essential for the functioning of the Single Market that citizens and businesses can easily find out what these rules in any of the Member States are. It is equally essential that the procedures for compliance with such rules should not entail a significant additional regulatory burden for foreign users compared to domestic users.

The main objective of the single digital gateway is to improve the functioning of the Single Market with an initiative based on articles 21(2), 48 and 114(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

The provision of information about the requirements to operate in the Single Market is fragmented and not sufficiently accessible for foreign users. Current EU-level initiatives only seek to address the problem on a sector-by-sector basis. Especially for users from other Member States, access to the Single Market would remain fraught with problems. Without additional action, the base line scenario would still see improvements being made in the right direction. But it would miss the opportunity for the big leap ahead that is needed to offer citizens and businesses the real benefits of the Single Market through a responsive, modern, user-centric and joined up service from EU and national level administrations. The REFIT Platform also stated that this is needed and demanded by business stakeholders.

The assessment of the state of play of the implementation of the Single Market, and obstacles that firms and citizens encounter in their cross-border activities would continue to be based mostly on ad hoc studies, cases and surveys. Such surveys are regularly commissioned by the European institutions, Member States and business stakeholders, implying limitations in terms of scope, focus, length and expected results.

The potential gradual introduction of specialised web portals (such as a European Mobility Portal on Social Security, VAT Portal) would continue to make it easier to find information – but only in cases where the portal itself is findable. No major changes in the findability of the existing services would be foreseen. There would be no instrument to stop the trend of further duplication and fragmentation.

The level of knowledge about the existing services will remain low and promotion efforts for the portals, contact points and assistance services are likely to continue in a largely uncoordinated way between the national and EU level.

The Public Documents Regulation obliges Member States to accept certain citizen documents issued by another Member State without requiring an apostille stamp to prove their authenticity or translation by mid-2018. This will help citizens in some of the most common cases where you need to provide supporting evidence, but there is no requirement to accept online documents, nor will the regulation address documents businesses need for procedures.

With regard to the Points of Single Contact, the progress that Member States have made based on the charter requirements has been limited and generally less advanced for cross-border users. The differences in the online availability of key procedures for national and non-national users can be considerable. However, cross-border access to e-procedures will be greatly facilitated by the eIDAS Regulation. By the September 2018 implementation deadline, Member States will be required to recognise eIDs notified by other Member States. This will take away one of the current obstacles for users to access e-procedures in other Member States. Nevertheless, Member States are likely to focus on domestic users while neglecting the needs of users from other Member States. At EU level, a number of sector-specific initiatives are in the pipeline which, if adopted by the co-legislators, would mean progress with accessibility for foreign users (e.g. Services e-card for business and construction services providers and pilot project to test the once-only principle for businesses cross-border in a number of areas).

Various Commission initiatives – already adopted by the co-legislators but not yet fully implemented, proposed but not yet adopted by the co-legislators or still under preparation by the Commission – aim to put in place online procedures in certain sectors under Single Market law, such as public procurement, company law and VAT. These always include cross-border access. If adopted and when implemented, these initiatives will mean progress.

Through their e-government programmes, Member States will continue to make progress in digitalising their interaction with citizens and businesses.

More Member States could be encouraged to apply the quality provisions drafted for Product Contact Points and Product Contact Points for Construction. A Commission-financed study provides guidelines for improving consistency across PCPC and PCP websites, including minimum desirable web content, best practices and ideas for an integrated PCP/PCPC/PSC webpage. However, the low response rate of PCPs and PCPCs to the questionnaire casts doubts on the willingness of Member States to take these on board.

In the absence of binding and across-the-board quality standards, Member States are likely to give priority to making information and services available online over creating high-quality online information and services. This is confirmed by the latest (2016) Commission e-government benchmarking report, which concludes that "governments have advanced in making public services digital, but focussed less on the quality of the delivery from the user’s perspective."

Improvements in the quality of online information and services depend largely on national agendas and priorities. EU-level action has played and will continue to play a nudging role, i.e. by continuing to push for the implementation of the Points of Single Contact Charter, and by exposing Member States' weaknesses through the annual e-government benchmarking reports and the Single Market Scoreboard. However, progress has been slow and uneven.

More Member States that seek to improve the efficiency of their information and assistance structures, will adopt a single citizens and business portal approach and a consolidation process for the various contact points may take place, although not very fast. The Commission has recommended that Member States create ‘Single Market Centres’ that coordinate information nationally, facilitating the access of citizens and businesses to information about rules and procedures. However, only a few Member States have acted on this. In the absence of legal obligations, the application of the established PSC charter (foreseeing turning the PSCs into e-government business portals providing everything that businesses need) is likely to continue to be uneven and not fully delivering for businesses. In particular, information about national rules for products would in many cases continue to be only available upon request since there is no legal obligation to provide it online.

Without further action beyond that already agreed or ongoing, the provision of information for businesses and citizens is likely to improve at national level but mostly within the silos of specific policy areas, depending on the specific considerations of the information provider, with more information services available at national than at regional or local levels.

A representative overview of the real problems faced by businesses and citizens in the Single Market is not readily available for policy making. Even though data are gathered through various mechanisms (including Your Europe Advice, SOLVIT, Enterprise Europe Network, Chambers of commerce, business organisations), it often focuses on specific cases and is not systematically combined and analysed at a central level to give a representative picture of the state of the Single Market as perceived by its users.

Moving online requires an upfront investment that can be substantial and payback times can be several years. However, good practices that focus on reusable software and centrally located software as service provision can substantially lower the upfront investment.

Public administrations (EU and national) are affected as they should respond to the expectations of citizens and businesses, but are not always in a position to do so. Although online services provide opportunities to increase efficiency by cutting costs and improving quality, the need to change the behaviour of a multitude of actors, and the limited means at the disposal of administrations constrain their ability to modernise quickly. A silo based approach still makes for an administrative working culture that does not exploit synergies, but rather creates fragmentation in a user-unfriendly way.

Obstacles that make it difficult for firms to export goods and services to other Member States have an effect on general welfare as they reduce competition, prevent efficiency gains and renewal of the economic fabric, thus lowering growth.

However, the use of online sources has radically increased the potential to shorten the time and lower the cost of obtaining information. The expectation of firms and citizens is that such improvements should also be available when dealing with public administrations, including from other countries.

Citizens and businesses find it difficult, especially from abroad, to tap the full benefits of the Single Market. They need comprehensible information about applicable rules and the ability to complete procedures online, but these are available only to a limited extent, if at all. Moreover, if problems arise or publicly available information is not clear or not specific enough, the person or company also needs personal