The role of interoperability in organisations

What is this action about?

This action has been responsible for the implementation of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and in particular these aspects:

• Interoperability Governance: refers to decisions on interoperability frameworks, arrangements, organisational structures, roles and structures at the EU and national level
• Organisational Interoperability: refers to the way in which public administrations align their business processes, responsibilities and expectations to achieve commonly agreed and mutually beneficial goals, while keeping users in focus.
• Integrated Public Service Governance: European public services operate in a complex and changing environment. Ensuring interoperability between the legal instruments, business processes, information exchanges and components that support the delivery of European public services is a continuous task.

What are the objectives?

• Identifying and describing governance structures and good practices for interoperability coordination
• Clarifying and proposing ways to formalise public administrations’ organisational relationships as part of the establishment of European public services
• Identifying and developing common process models to describe business processes
• Evaluating the implementation of the EIF

What are the benefits?

• Proposing a set of best practices for achieving organisational interoperability (e.g. business process modelling) which have been successfully used by European, national or regional organisations.  
• Suggesting best practices for governance models based on the type of country/region and the level of its complexity and identifying key indicators to measure the success.

What has been achieved? 

• In 2018 the action has focused on supporting further the interoperability action plan reusing the previous work done on interoperability governance, public service governance and organisational interoperability. The outcome of this work produced the report on Interoperability Governance Models, which provides insights on collaborative governance structures to drive interoperability and that may serve as best practices at both EU and Member States' levels.
• In 2019 the action has completed this work by identifying further best practices in these domains in order to propose successful ways of implementing the EIF recommendations related to organisational interoperability, interoperability governance and public service governance. Outcome of this action was the study ’Recommendations for organising and governing integrated public services’. This study aims to provide guidance and recommendations to public administrations developing and operating integrated public services on how to approach organisational and governance issues related to the development of these services.
• In 2020  and 2021, the action connects the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) with Smart Cities and Communities (EIF4SCC). This action proposes the EIF4SCC to support local administrations and other actors with challenges that relate to providing interoperability services to citizens and businesses. The Framework intends to support primarily local administrations and, in particular, local policy makers. This work  is jointly managed by DG DIGIT as part of the ISA² Programme (2016-2020), and by DG CONNECT in the framework of the Living-in.eu movement. While an EIF for eGovernment has been in place since 2010, this is the first time the concepts and ideas developed there have been adapted to the local context. The aim of the EIF4SCC is to provide EU local administration leaders with definitions, principles, recommendations, practical use cases drawn from cities and communities from around Europe and beyond, and a common model to facilitate delivery of services to the public across domains, cities, regions and borders. The outcomes of this action are the proposed Framework EIF4SCC and the final study report that includes the full Final study report for the proposed Framework. 

Proposal for an EIF4SCC: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f69284c4-eacb-11eb-93a8-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

Final Study Report: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d81f58c4-eebb-11eb-a71c-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

What are the next steps?

• The EIF4SCC aims to support local administrations and other actors with challenges that relate to providing interoperability services to citizens and businesses. The Framework intends to support primarily local administrations and, in particular, local policy makers. This work is jointly managed by DG DIGIT as part of the ISA² Programme (2016-2020), and by DG CONNECT in the framework of the Living-in.eu movement.