Interview with Nikolay Minev: SEGA, raising the level of network and information security in Bulgaria

Nikolay Minev, Director of Information Systems and Interoperability Directorate at SeGA shares some valuable insights on the semantic operability in Bulgaria

For less than two years of existence (since December 2016) the State e-Government Agency (SeGA) of the Republic of Bulgaria has made significant efforts to raise the level of network and information security at the public administration. With the establishment of this institution Bulgaria has set up a separate structure with powers in the e-government field for the first time. The main focus of the Agency is the tangible reduction of the administrative burden to citizens and businesses and for optimizing the processes within the administrations.

In addition to its responsibilities for the policies, strategies, regulations and best practices in the e-government field, the State e-Government Agency (SeGA) of the Republic of Bulgaria also manages central registries: a) Interoperability Registries; b) Registries of Subjects, Objects and Events; c) Register of projects and activities in the e-government area; d) Register of the resources in the e-Government area.

SeGA recently introduced the first key eGovernment component – e-Delivery (ePost), functioning as a new electronic administrative service for the administrations, citizens and businesses. The e-Delivery system allows sending, receiving and storing electronic document to/from public authorities, citizens and legal entities. The e-Delivery is an electronic equivalent of the registered mail with a return receipt and is provided in accordance with art. 43 of the Regulation (ЕС) № 910/2014 and art. 26, para.2 and 4 of EGA.

All administrative authorities can integrate the e-Delivery module into their information systems or use it via a user interface.

An access for real-time electronic check of available personal data stored in administrative registers has been provided to individuals.

The State e-Government Agency also started developing a single and compulsory for all administrations Architecture of the Central Components of Electronic Government. The Architectural Framework of e-Government shall unify all processes of development of the information systems and the information and communication infrastructure in the state. The Framework shall provide the main standards and directions of change in the work processes at the administrations, connected with e-government. The single Architecture of e-government shall change the model of financing the development and application of information systems; it will guarantee sustainability and consistency of the e-government model in Bulgaria.
 

SeGA is currently working on a semantic interoperability strategy. What are the main goals of this strategy?

The amendments in the e-Governance Act, adopted in June 2016, obliges SeGA to create and support the necessary registry structures, to ensure the administrative capacity for execution of (clearing) processes for data unification and formalization. The basis of interoperable content management is the unification and formalization of data definitions.

The formalized data and the formalized description of the electronic administrative services shall be entered into the register of information objects, respectively into the administrative register.

Building software for e-Government means observing the compliances with the requirements of interoperability. Those requirements are not only preliminary defined but stable in their existence. That allows the creation of reusable program code with really “long life”, which gives a good base for high efficiency of software production. The assets of semantic interoperability are reusable metadata (XML schemes, data models, etc.) and comparative data (classifiers, taxonomies, etc.). Semantic interoperability strategy suggests a collection of such assets, which facilitates interconnection of systems semantically.

Which is the status of the work in progress of the strategy?

We are still at the initial stage of defining the challenges and finding the right solution to overcome each obstacle in the most efficient manner.

Metadata level is the initial level for achieving semantic interoperability. Setting up repositories of XML schemes is a prerequisite for achieving interoperability on syntax level.

The electronic services can be represented by the definitions of service request, service response(s) and service workflow description. The service requests and response(s) are electronic documents (forms), consisting of a set of data types, registered in the e-Government XML-repository, named by the eGovernance Acts Register of information objects.

Core Vocabularies developed by the ISA² Programme should be part of the existing and functioning national government environment of interoperability.

However, our goal is to have an adopted Architectural frame of the e-Government and finish the initial stage of the strategy by the end of this year.

What kind of problems will this strategy solve once put into place?

The Register of information objects as a part of the national semantic interoperability structure has been operating since 2008. But new models are developing, and traditional ones are adapting according to the new realities of the DSM and cross-border services.

All this establishes the interoperability infrastructure, supporting Bulgarian National Data Model. Many other laws oblige government and local administrations to support other different kind of data sets and services for access to them. Following the requirements for interoperability and by using the resources of the interoperability infrastructure, those services can be designed and executed in a standard way.

Bulgaria is working in connecting all the base registries in the country. How will this improve the digital public services provided by public administrations in the country? How can citizens benefit from this?

Just as in the 'Common Strategy for e-Government in Bulgaria 2011-2015', registries and databases are an important part described in the information model section. The 2014-2020 strategy underlines again the need of a complete transition to e-registries and the registry production, among the expected results being the connection of up to 200 registries of key significance for the provision of complex e‐services and the establishment of a registry of e‐Governance resources.

RegiX  is a software infrastructure that enables the automated interconnections between multiple Bulgarian registries (currently 62), as well as information systems, in the form of machine-to-machine services. RegiX has been developed as part of the central e-government system. The environment for automated interconnections between registries is defined as a way of facilitating interaction between administrations, with the goal of providing integrated administrative services. This would lead to administrative authorities that provide public services, not to require citizens or organisations to provide more than once the data that the administration already has, in accordance to the once only principle. Instead, they must collect it officially from the primary administrator of the data. Via RegiX, notification and request for data is done electronically and automatically as an internal electronic administrative service. In this way, the 'Once-Only' principle and multiple usage of information will be applied.

According to Decision #496 of the Council of Ministers from 29 August 2017 all administrative authorities should use the “environment for interconnection of base registers” (RegiX) when providing administrative services.

According to the same decision and based on the availability of RegiX in order to reduce the administrative burden for citizens and business the Government has taken steps to remove a dozen of the most commonly used supporting documents in paper.

We will gather together next 14 June in Sofia to hold the 8th edition of the Semantic Interoperability Conference, SEMIC2018. Organised by the ISA² Programme of the European Commission, this year the main topic will be ‘Linked Digital Public Administrations’ emphasising the need for linking information and data in the public sector to bring benefits to citizens and business in Europe. Will you be there to join the discussion?