How the European Commission is creating a truly unified digital experience for EU citizens
The Connecting Europe Facility and ISA2 programmes, alongside with EU Member States, have been working throughout the last EU budget cycle to create a more digital Europe – developing and connecting technology that has a positive impact on society. The time has come for these programmes to carry on their mission together, under the new Digital Europe Programme.
To celebrate this change, we are organising an event that looks back at their joint achievements and prepares for the digital journey ahead – DigitALL Public will gather some of the most innovative companies and organisations in the EU, during three days of online activities including keynotes, interactive workshops and fireside chats.
The new Digital Europe Programme will continue the work that the CEF and ISA2 programmes achieved in supporting more digital service delivery for governments across EU Member States, to make citizens’ lives easier and ensure European legislation creates a common, predictable online environment for everyone.
The CEF and ISA2 programmes have rolled out Building Blocks and open and reusable solutions that make it easier for governments, but also for businesses, to make their digital services more innovative, transformative and – most importantly – interoperable across national borders. These Building Blocks support the adoption of open technical standards to ensure IT systems can operate across borders, to form a digital single market.
The creation and development of these Building Blocks and open solutions was in itself not easy. Prior to the roll out of these digital solutions within the European internal market, the Member States launched several Large-Scale Pilot programmes. These pilots tested critical cross-border infrastructure, enabling processes like secure message exchange, electronic identity or archiving – helping the European Commission identify the most pressing barriers to digital transformation . The outcome of these pilots were viable prototypes that could then be incubated and refined by the ISA2 programme. Once a solution had matured into a fully interoperable digital solution – a Building Block – it could then be deployed and promoted through the CEF Digital programme, the digital arm of the Connecting Europe Facility, the EU’s main funding for trans-continental infrastructure 2014-2020.
Today, anyone can implement one of these European solutions, or build software based on open technical standards.
Europe must now go one-step further. Together we will create a truly unified digital experience for EU citizens through the implementation of the Once Only Principle.
This is the principle of Once Only, where citizens only have to share their information once for administrative procedures (even across borders) and governments exchange the relevant information in the background. The Once Only Principle is the backbone of a Single Digital Gateway for all European citizens and businesses wishing to move or do business abroad. All this is to make every day experiences as smooth as possible for EU citizens, and truly live up to the promise of a connected digital single market.
So join us at the DigitALL Public on April 20, 21 and 22,
a conference to celebrate Europe’s digital future!