EUROPEAN COMMISSION Brussels, 18.11.2022 COM(2022) 710 final COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS on a strengthened public sector interoperability policy



Linking public services, supporting public policies and delivering public benefits

Towards an ‘Interoperable Europe’ {SWD(2022) 710 final}



Table of Contents 1. Setting the scene 2. Driving interoperable public sector digitalisation 2.1 What is interoperability… 2.2 …and why does improving interoperability matter for the EU? 3. Changing gear on EU interoperability cooperation 3.1 Building a shared interoperability governance 3.2 Involving all layers of government 3.3 Advancing innovation and ‘GovTech’ cooperation 3.4 Monitoring impact 4. Making EU policies interoperable by design and digital-ready 4.1 Designing EU policies in the digital age 4.2 Focusing interoperability funding 4.3 Embedding interoperability into EU data and innovation policies 4.4 Developing international cooperation on public sector interoperability



1.Setting the scene Interoperable digital public services are essential for successfully digitalising the European Union’s single market. There is a lot to be gained by industry and society from making sure the digital transformation of Europe’s public sector is inclusive, fair and open, sustainable, value-driven and interoperable. The digital transformation of the public sector creates very considerable pull and push factors for the digitalisation of European industry and society. The weight and potential of the public sector for a value-driven “European way” of digital transformation has been acknowledged by EU governments, and local and regional communities , and confirmed by the EU Digital Compass, identifying the public sector as one of four cardinal points signposting the EU’s digital trajectory. Digital public administrations have emerged as a particular focus points of national Recovery and Resilience Plans as well, with a combined planned investment of EUR 47 billion.

A stronger focus on public sector interoperability supports Europe’s recovery effort and resilience, effectively connecting public administrations and policies, people and business for seamless service offers and data flows. This includes making EU policies fit for the digital age, ensuring effective policy implementation by digital means and interoperability from the policy design stage, in close partnership between policy makers and ICT experts. This also includes building a virtuous innovation cooperation loop for designing and delivering digital public services. This communication accompanies the proposal for an ‘Interoperable Europe Act’, which aims at establishing a common interoperability governance and at facilitating the co-creation of an ecosystem of interoperability solutions across the EU. Joint development of solutions, as well as sharing and reusing proven tools is the fast and cost-effective approach to designing digital public services. Strengthened interoperability cooperation is essential for fully tapping into the public sector’s transformation potential, avoiding fragmentation and improving connectivity and data sharing. By doing this, the proposed policy framework will contribute to safeguarding Europe’s digital sovereignty and empower digital subsidiarity. Strengthening EU government interoperability policy delivers on the Commission’s priorities and digital policy agenda, making Europe’s public sector fit for the digital age. 2.Driving interoperable public sector digitalisation 2.1What is interoperability… Public sector interoperability is what enables administrations to cooperate and make public services function across borders, across sectors and across organisational boundaries. This benefits people and businesses who depend on these connected services. It also benefits communities and administrations themselves, which depend on trusted data from different public or private sources for their decisions, and which need to deliver on policy objectives that are often interconnected across borders and sectors. Interoperability plays a role within and across organisations and policy sectors, in particular those with a strong public sector connection, such as justice and home affairs, taxation and customs, transport, environment and agriculture, or health, as well as business and industry regulation. Interoperability is an established theme across EU digital and data policies. Public services are delivered and used at different levels, foremost locally, but also at regional, national and European levels. They rarely function in isolation, as the access to registers established at different levels or sectors is necessary in order to exchange data and deliver the required service to the end-users. Much of this data is located outside the context of a given policy area, a specific public administration and, increasingly, beyond borders. This means public services across Europe represent an emerging ‘network of networks’ of largely sovereign actors at all levels of government, each with their own legal framework and mandates, yet all interconnected. In analogy to the established Trans-European Transport and Energy Networks, public services are forming their own Trans-European network, founded on interoperability. Interoperability is sometimes seen as a purely technical matter. However, considering the technical aspects alone is not sufficient for effectively linking administrations, data flows and services. It is necessary to ensure technical connection capacity and semantic understanding for the exchange and processing of the data concerned, and to establish the required organisational and legal context, for instance in relation to rights to access, exchange or reuse of data. For coordination and coherence, interoperability also requires an integrated governance approach. These basic conditions – or ‘layers’ – of interoperability are set out in the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), a conceptual model developed by digital public sector practitioners from across Europe in 2004 and updated twice since. Over this period, in sync with an increasingly connected world, interoperability emerged as an essential aspect of the digital transformation of administrations and services. The EIF is now the commonly accepted policy framework for interoperability in the EU, and beyond. Given its specific mission to serve the common public cause, this interoperability foundation needs to be transparent, inclusive, fair and secure, and firmly based on EU values. Interoperability is what enables public sector actors to connect, cooperate and exchange data while safeguarding sovereignty and subsidiarity. 2.2…and why does improving interoperability matter for the EU? Improvements in public sector performance thanks to full implementation of interoperability at all levels of administration could lead to an estimated increase of 0.4% in EU GDP. Individuals could save up to 24 million hours a year, or EUR 543 million. Businesses could save 30 billion hours or EUR 568 billion a year. The estimated annual cost savings credited to cross-border interoperability range between EUR 5.5 and 6.3 million for citizens, and between EUR 5.7 and 19.2 billion for businesses. Case studies also show that interoperability has a positive effect on other public values, beyond efficiency gains. For example, pro-active public services or multilingual semantic support improve access to and inclusiveness in public services, increasing public trust. Interoperability is vital in times of crisis, as Covid-19 has shown. Not only was interoperability necessary for the creation of digital Covid-19 certificates that are accessible EU-wide, but also for the real-time sharing of data on available beds in intensive care in hospitals. Interoperability helps the State to be more agile and ensure access to real-time information across sectors and administrative levels; it helps assess policy performance and gives incentives to constantly innovate, share efforts and bridge gaps across policy areas. However, the current policy framework of non-binding interoperability cooperation is not fit for making the most of these estimated gains. While digital government and data experts have developed – with remarkable commitment – a wide-ranging common EU interoperability acquis of cooperation practices, concepts, reusable solutions, open specifications and tools that support national reform efforts and established EU policies, recent evaluations have exposed major limitations of this entirely voluntary approach to cooperation. Digital aspects, including data access and sharing aspects, are all too often addressed too late in the policymaking process. Interoperability considerations are not ‘wired into’ public services. This means high implementation risks and costs, missed opportunities, and, in the worst case, an undermining of large scale digitalisation-dependent policies. Public administrations can only be interoperable if the right assessments and choices are made early on in the policy design phase. Not acting to improve interoperability could make the EU miss the opportunity to considerably reduce administrative burden. This would lower the resilience of public administrations, limit their capacity to innovate and, in the worst case, make them unable to act in times of crisis. Cooperation of public administrations across borders must become as natural and seamless as trains crossing borders, or energy flows between national networks. The response to Covid-19 only highlighted the importance of stable digital public sector interaction across borders and across sectors. In this context, and with digital transformation gaining momentum, EU ministers responsible for public sector transformation and Member State chief information officers (CIOs) have become increasingly vocal about the need to strengthen European interoperability cooperation. They call for a stable organisational structure, for generalising the application of the EIF, for designating commonly accepted and open specifications and solutions ready for reuse. They also call for an ‘interoperability by design’ approach and for better coordinating experimentation and innovation in the public sector, including cooperation with the private sector (‘GovTech). The Commission’s proposal for a strengthened EU public sector interoperability policy responds to these needs. 3.Changing gear on EU interoperability cooperation 3.1Building a shared interoperability governance The proposed Interoperable Europe Act focuses on building a structured, transparent and inclusive cooperation framework, providing for the adaptability and innovation capacity that the public sector needs in a dynamic technical, societal and political context. Interoperability cannot be achieved from the top down by a single entity, nor can it be achieved from the bottom up by individual actors: it requires effective cooperation between policy-makers and policy implementers across all levels of government and across sectors. It also requires an open but stable and integrated governance framework. One that ensures subsidiarity by establishing effective co-ownership. One that is sustainable for the future because something designed to be interoperable becomes less quickly outdated. One that turns the public sector’s transformation potential into reality and safeguards public values. The proposed Interoperable Europe Act seeks to provide this cooperation framework. It provides for the establishment of an Interoperable Europe Board to steer the common interoperability effort, bringing together Member State central digital transformation authorities and EU Institutions. It also provides for an open Interoperable Europe Community of experts, practitioners and interested parties to ensure transparency and link to grassroots practice. Interoperability is a moving target because of the fast pace of technology development and ever evolving policy needs. It requires a dedicated, innovation-friendly and open legal setup that avoids regulatory and technological lock-ins. Other options, such as enshrining the technologies used today in law, would risk undermining future innovation and limit the capacity of administrations to adapt to changing needs and new technologies. Interoperability policymaking and regulation in themselves need to be innovative and digital-ready. The proposed Interoperable Europe Act seeks to provide such built-in innovation framework for the public sector. The EIF is the reference instrument for public sector interoperability implementation. In order to ensure it stays relevant, it needs to be regularly reviewed and updated. It also needs further development of implementation recommendations and support, for instance, to support the upcoming EU sectoral data spaces, in close coordination with the European Data Innovation Board and the requirements of the upcoming Data Act. The proposed Interoperable Europe Act provides for such regular updating, in line with innovation-friendly and digital-ready regulation.

3.2Involving all layers of government A strengthened EU interoperability governance co-owned by Member States and the EU offers a much-needed improved policy and support framework for EU public sector reform objectives. This effort needs to be collective, spanning all levels of government, in order to maintain and update the rich interoperability acquis of concepts, guidelines, specifications and reusable assets. Adequate involvement and representation of regional and local communities is a prerequisite, not only because they constitute the ‘first and last mile’ of public service delivery, but also in order to be able to tap into the considerable innovation capacity of cities and regions. Here, public-private innovation and service cooperation play an important role. Movements such as ‘Living-in-EU’, as well as extended project cooperation such as ‘Open and Agile Smart Cities’, show that there is a strong demand for cooperation around interoperability and readiness to engage from regional and local levels. The variety and expertise of locally developed interoperability solutions is an important asset and should be systematically contributing to catalogues of recognised and commonly available interoperability resources. This is why the proposed future EU interoperability governance should include representatives from rural and urban local and regional authorities and societal groups on the future Interoperable Europe Board and why experts from all levels of government are actively encouraged to contribute to the work of the future Interoperable Europe Community. To cater specifically for local and regional conditions, the Commission, in close cooperation with private and public stakeholders, has developed a ‘European Interoperability Framework for Smart Cities and Communities’ (EIF4SCC) fully aligned with the EIF. Following extensive public discussion and consultation, this specialisation of the EIF is presented in the staff working document accompanying this communication. The Commission encourages experts and practitioners from other policy areas to follow this example of adapting the EIF to specific and/or sectoral use cases. The future Interoperability governance will be given the task of assessing the alignment of the specialised interoperability frameworks with the EIF. For instance, a specialisation of the EIF has been developed in the past for digital health purposes. Traditionally, interoperability also plays an important role in environmental policy, justice and home affairs or transport. 3.3Advancing innovation and ‘GovTech’ cooperation Avoiding falling behind in technology integration is a constant challenge for the public sector. While often criticised for technology risk aversion, public authorities, in their unique role serving the common cause, need to demonstrate a particular duty of care as regards technology adoption and lawful, fair and trustworthy technology use. Yet, new technologies have the potential to make public services more accessible, more inclusive and more efficient than ever. Ensuring continuous digital innovation for the public sector is as challenging as it is important. Across Europe there are already several hundreds of activities testing and piloting digital technologies in the public sector; learning about the benefits and risks of these technologies is essential. The Commission is setting up an Innovative Public Services Observatory to analyse trends and identify good and bad practices, to inform the adoption of emerging technologies and to ensure interoperability by design. The observatory will assess how technologies such as Artificial Intelligence are transforming public sector processes and governance structures. This will help EU as well as national and local authorities to take informed decisions about implementing emerging technologies. Europe is full of thriving regional ecosystems of innovative small technology companies and start-ups, supported, amongst other, by a network of Digital Innovation Hubs and by the European Innovation Council. Openly available, reusable and recognised interoperability resources are important assets for small innovative companies and civil society initiatives to engage with the public sector. Public-private ‘GovTech’ or ‘CivicTech’ cooperation stimulates public sector innovation, supports Europe’s technological sovereignty and opens pathways to public procurement. Gaining access to public procurement is a core concern for smaller companies, to be able to scale up and gain recognition and stable operating income. Supporting GovTech is a dedicated strand of both the Digital Europe Programme and the proposed Interoperable Europe Act, fully aligned with the EU innovation support framework. Industry will have a link to the future Interoperable Europe Board via the European Economic and Social Committee and is invited to join the future Interoperable Europe Community. 3.4Monitoring impact The impact assessment for a future interoperability policy has exposed the difficulties of collecting data and estimating the cost and benefits of interoperability as an activity that is not in itself the end purpose but an important support instrument for public sector digitalisation. It is however useful to measure interoperability maturity in order to guide investments and gauge progress. A multitude of reporting and monitoring tools exist for digital government, depending on specific user, sector or geographic focus. These tools are not always aligned or sufficiently connected, and the results are rarely presented in an easy-to-use machine-readable format. They also may impose a considerable burden on administrations as the Commission expert group on interoperability of public services has pointed out. For these reasons it is important to develop transparent and reusable, digital-ready reporting and monitoring tools, to help reach the Digital Decade targets. Existing monitoring formats should be integrated into a ‘once-only’ logic, reusing data and surveys where possible and making the results openly available in machine-readable formats. This is in itself an aspect of digital-ready policymaking, with tools and concepts reusable, integrated and transferrable, for the benefit of practitioners and policymakers. The Commission proposal for an Interoperable Europe Act: -establishes a structured EU cooperation on interoperability and co-ownership with Member States of the EU interoperability acquis by creating the Interoperable Europe Board composed of digital government practitioners representing Member States; it creates the Interoperable Europe Community as an open forum of professionals and interested parties advising on interoperability and public sector innovation; -mandates the Interoperable Europe Board to develop the EIF and ensure its future evolution; -introduces in a proportionate manner a mandatory interoperability assessment for any change to, or introduction of, an information system or system component of cross-border relevance that enables public services to be delivered or managed electronically; -introduces catalogues of recognised interoperability assets that can be reused by administrations and in policymaking, such as digital tools, specifications or solutions; and -strengthens interoperability support for digital-ready EU policies and for common GovTech innovation projects. The Commission will: -adopt a renewed EIF, based on a proposal by the future Interoperable Europe Board. The new EIF will focus on concrete implementation recommendations, including for EU data spaces, in close coordination with the European Data Innovation Board;

-support the development of sectoral interoperability specialisations aligned with the EIF, such as the EIF for smart cities and communities (EIF4SCC) published alongside this communication; -ensure close interaction of its GovTech cooperation and support activities with EU innovation instruments such as Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs), the European Innovation Council and Ecosystems (EIC and EIE) and the European Institute of Technology (EIT); and -ensure reporting and monitoring on interoperability is fully aligned with and, as needed, integrated into relevant EU policy monitoring tracks (especially the Digital Economy and Society Index DESI, the Digital Decade process, monitoring of the Berlin Declaration and of national Recovery and Resilience Plans). 4.Making EU policies interoperable by design and digital-ready 4.1Designing EU policies in the digital age Digital aspects in general, and interoperability specifically, have traditionally been delegated to technical experts and addressed only downstream, late in, or even after conclusion of the policymaking process. This carries high policy implementation risks and costs from unintended barriers and limitations. To overcome this, it is necessary to adopt a systemic interoperability-by-design approach to policy making. The policy making and implementation cycle is increasingly data-driven and digital, ranging from foresight and impact assessment, to data collection and monitoring, to services and tools. EU policies contain more and more digital aspects. With policy objectives, data sets and digital solutions closely inter-connected, EU policy making and implementation can only be effective and efficient if supported by a partnership between policy makers and ICT experts. This partnership needs to start as early as possible in the policy formulation and development process. The Commission’s own Digital Strategy and Better Regulation agenda firmly incorporate digital thinking into the EU policy cycle, promoting the ‘digital-by-default’ principle in policy development. Digital and interoperability aspects need to be considered at all stages: policy design, stakeholder consultations, impact assessments, policy implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The aim of ‘digital checks’ as a dedicated, if evolving, component of the Commission’s Better Regulation Toolbox, is to help policymakers identify and address the relevant digital aspects of a policy early on. Checks must go hand in hand with structural expert advice, e.g. on system architecture, data and cloud technologies and privacy and cybersecurity. Reuse of data from authoritative sources, reuse of existing solutions and uptake of innovative technologies will make implementation simpler and more resource-efficient, while paving the way for the use of data analytics, secure and safe data flows and Artificial Intelligence and emerging technologies. This practice has proven its potential for simplification and reducing administrative burden. For legislative proposals, there will be a greater focus on interoperability, systematically assessing conformity with the EIF (and, if relevant any of its specialisations) and identifying the scope for reuse of interoperable systems, concepts and components. This enables the Commission and Member States to structure data collection and monitoring practices and prevent development of duplicated and conflicting systems, vendor lock-in and unsustainable ICT practices. The structured cooperation of public administrations across EU countries proposed under the Interoperable Europe Act, will yield advice on EU policies with high impacts on the digital infrastructure of Member States and enable timely implementation of EU policies. Digital-ready and interoperability-by-design policymaking will support the emergence of genuinely trans-European digital services for people, businesses and public policy, relevant for the Digital Single Market. It will increase cross-border trust, as demonstrated by, for example, the EU Digital Covid-19 certificates, secure digital identity, the Internal Market Information System (IMI) and a growing number of cross-border services enabled by the Digital Single Gateway. While the Commission has committed itself to digital-ready policymaking and will ensure its application to policy initiatives and legislative proposals, this is only the start. To make EU legislation fully digital-ready and interoperable-by-design, it is important to seek, and eventually ensure, a shared understanding between the co-legislators, in full respect of the roles of each Institution. The common EU interoperability governance under the proposed Interoperable Europe Act is an essential instrument for helping this shared understanding emerge. 4.2Focusing interoperability funding EU programmes provide dedicated funding for research, development and maintenance of EU public sector interoperability resources, such as interoperability assessment tools, semantic vocabularies, GovTech or reusable building blocks for data exchange and electronic identity. It is important that Member States IT and policy practitioners – the ultimate users of these resources and implementers of policies – advise on the priorities for EU funding addressing interoperability. The future Interoperable Europe Board will be tasked with giving advice on any policy implementation or innovation support measures deemed necessary, as envisaged in the proposed Interoperable Europe Act. EU funding for interoperability also supports implementation of EU policies relevant for digital government, such as the Single Digital Gateway, the EU eID wallet or Local Digital Twins. With the Structural Funds, the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Connecting Europe Facility, and the Technical Support Instrument (TSI), the EU supports public sector modernisation investments in the Member States. The EU public administration network is developing an ambitious modernisation agenda. The Digital Decade proposal and the TSI make provision for multi-country projects supporting digital transformation, including European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC). Such modernisation and reform support strands should ensure early-stage coordination and take interoperability needs into account, for instance through regular exchange with and advice from the practitioners on the future Interoperable Europe Community. 4.3Embedding interoperability into EU data and innovation policies Interoperability policy is a necessary complement to the emerging EU data and digital policy landscape. It builds on and completes legislation on data availability and data exchange, from a public sector angle. It supports central common tools like ‘data.europa.eu’, the official portal for European data. It can provide the semantic expertise needed for building data spaces and EU cloud policy. Accordingly, and for the strengthened EU interoperability policy to be fully effective, a close interaction with relevant operational and regulatory digital policy structures needs to be guaranteed, in particular with the European Data Innovation Board. The 2030 Digital Compass, the EU’s digital policy reference framework, recognises digital government as one of its core vectors and the strengthened EU interoperability policy is designed to support the concomitant Digital Decade process. By default, EU interoperability assets are available as open specifications or open source software. They need to be open in order to be readily reusable by public administrations at all levels, that create interoperable systems and services, and by private sector and industry partners working with these administrations. While open source is not the only approach to creating interoperability, EU funded projects for public services should be open source by default. This is why the proposed Interoperable Europe Act provides for access to reusable solutions, including code, where appropriate and possible. The Commission itself makes code available as open source and contributes to open source projects. A dedicated European Public License (EUPL) is available in all official EU languages with a licensing assistant providing online legal support. With Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs) or their like being set up across Member State administrations, the Interoperable Europe Board and Interoperable Europe Community will be supporting best practice exchanges and help identify reusable solutions and development needs. Close interaction with standardisation fora and activities is particularly important for the evolution of the European interoperability acquis and for ensuring an open, inclusive and value-driven digital transformation. As the EU is implementing its renewed standardisation policy framework, related public sector interoperability considerations will systematically be addressed by the future Interoperable Europe Board. This includes contributing to standardisation ‘urgency areas’ in the public sector and supporting the EU’s role in developing standards for public services. The Commission’s recently published Innovation Agenda underlines the beneficial role of the public sector, not only as regulator but also as procurer and experimentation partner, in strengthening the EU’ innovation capacity. The Agenda stresses the potential of interoperability and encourages exploring public sector experimentation in controlled environments (sandboxes) and GovTech cooperation.