About the Digital Europe Programme
The Vision of a Digital Europe
How to make Europe more digital?
In the EU’s internal market, people are able to move freely – either for work or privately – and so must access public services outside their home country. IT systems and digital infrastructure are now at the heart of government processes, business transactions and our personal administration.
Our legislation in the digital domain is known globally for being a trendsetter, from the cross-border authentication of citizens in other Member States, as set out in the eIDAS regulation on authentication and trust services, to data protection enshrined in the general data protection regulation.
But we want to go beyond this. The European Commission has worked – and will continue to do so – with Member States to provide technical enablers of cross-border interoperability directly in the form of IT solutions. Thanks to the digital building blocks, local, regional and national authorities enable the delivery of fully digital government services to European citizens.
Commission President von der Leyen has put digital matters right at the top of her political agenda and the COVID-19 pandemic has only highlighted the need for a digital Europe.
How are we doing this?
The digital arm of the Connecting Europe Facility programme (CEF Digital) (2014-2020) has supported the adoption and reuse of digital building blocks in public and private projects and services on a continental scale. These building blocks make it easier to interconnect complex digital services and IT systems across Europe, and so support the EU’s twin green and digital transitions.
The Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) (2021-2027) is a new EU funding programme focused on bringing digital technology to businesses, citizens and public administrations. It aims to accelerate the digital transformation of public administrations across Europe and help upskill them. It further aims to facilitate interoperability as a core enabler of Europe’s digital autonomy, and foster the uptake of interoperable cross-border and cross-sector public services in alignment with regulatory requirements.
DIGITAL provides funding in five key areas: supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills, and ensuring a wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society, including the building blocks.
With a planned overall budget of €7.5 billion (in current prices), DIGITAL aims to accelerate the economic recovery and shape the digital transformation of Europe’s society and economy, bringing benefits to everyone, but in particular to small and medium-sized enterprises.
What is a Building Block?
The Building Blocks are standards-based open and reusable digital solutions that enable basic capabilities, such as trusted authentication and secure data exchange. They offer basic capabilities that can be used in any European project to facilitate the delivery of digital public services across borders.
Deployed alone or as a portfolio, the building blocks can build smart cities. They allow data to become the digital lifeblood of modern services, built on the principle of interoperability. The building blocks implement the provisions of the eIDAS regulation on authentication and trust services in the internal market, a global legal and technical reference in secure, trusted cross-border authentication.
The role of the building blocks can also be seen in the digitisation and innovation of market processes. Electronic invoicing and procurement that respect a common standard open up balanced competition within the internal market, along with the door to innovative new processes and a greening of old, paper-based business processes.
The Digital Europe Programme has introduced some organisational changes to provision of cross-border interoperable digital services deployed under it. This includes focused efforts to support the digital transformation of public administrations throughout Europe. We have re-vamped our website to reflect these changes and the family of digital building blocks, which now mostly include eIDAS enablers such as eDelivery, eSignature and eID.
Via the links below you will find useful information about other interesting initiatives supporting the digital transformation of public administrations.
European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI): The first public sector blockchain services in Europe, by the European Commission and the European Blockchain Partnership.
Big Data Test Infrastructure for the EU public administrations: A set of services to help public administrations explore and experiment with various data sources, software and methodologies.
eArchiving: An initiative to ensure data sustainability and digital preservation of any kind of information, by providing standard specifications, capacity building and fostering digital skills of professionals and stakeholders, and providing supporting activities for new and existing users.
eTranslation: The flagship machine translation system.
eLangTech: A jumping off page with links to other language tools such as anonymization, as well as to a “Developer’s Corner” with technical information.
Context Broker: The Context Broker implements the mechanisms to produce, gather, publish and consume context information following the specifications of the standard NGSI-LD.
Interoperable Europe: The European Commission's initiative for a reinforced interoperability policy in the public sector, committed to introducing a new cooperative Interoperability policy for Europe that will transform the public administrations and help them in their digital transformation. The initiative continues and expands the mission of the now completed ISA² programme.
Governance model of the DIGITAL Building Blocks
To find out more about the governance structure of the DIGITAL Building Blocks, please access the document below. It introduces you to the European Commission’s project management methodology PM2 and showcases how this methodology is implemented in the governance structure of the Building Blocks eDelivery, eID, eSignature, eInvoicing, EBSI, and OOTS. The document also outlines the funding structure of the DIGITAL Building Blocks under the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) (2021-2027), and explains the roles of the different Directorate-Generals and other bodies involved in governing and implementing the DIGITAL Building Blocks.
Are you interested in how the Building Blocks were governed under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) (2014-2020), the predecessor programme to DIGITAL? Then have a look through the Non-paper on the IT Governance of the CEF Building Block Digital Service Infrastructures (DSIs). This non-paper sets out an ‘integrated’ IT Governance Model that aimed to align both policy and implementation, as well as the operational practices of DSIs with CEF’s long-term strategic goals. It served to promote coherence across CEF Building Block DSIs and build trust between them and the sector-specific DSIs, while promoting efficiency and avoiding the duplication of structures.