Better Legislation for Smoother Implementation

This has been an exciting year for Better Legislation for Smoother Implementation. Our community of members has doubled in size and together we have managed to accomplish multiple initiatives (our 2021 Retrospective).

During the past year, the BLSI team has organized 5 virtual webinars where we discussed multiple topics touching upon different aspects of digital-ready policies, interoperability and digital tools. Over 300 participants have attended our webinars – thank you for your interest and contribution! During one of the events, you gave your feedback on the needs for learning materials for policy makers, which we implemented in our first BLSI online course.

During 2021, our legal interoperability team was very active to shape the digital-ready aspects of the Commissions new Better Regulation agenda. We are pleased to see that the Commission now underlines the importance of assessing draft policies against digital aspects and provides policy makers with necessary guidelines in this respect.

The need for digital-ready checks of new Commission proposals and the ambition to apply the principle of interoperability by default in policymaking may form part of the future interoperability policy as well, thanks to the recommendation of the Expert Group on Interoperability of public services earlier this year.

While the ISA² Programme has evolved into Interoperable Europe recently, our vision and mission remained unchanged: together with you, we thrive to make better legislation for smoother implementation.

As you can see, this has been quite an eventful and productive year. But there is even more news coming up! In January we will host a virtual breakfast on innovative practices in regulatory reporting – stay tuned for more information! You can also check the key take-aways from our October webinar on regulation of interoperability in public sector available on our Joinup platform. And do not miss the opportunity to read our new paper on the importance of metadata in the regulatory reporting process.

And we are ready to commit to our 2022 resolution! In the next year, we will invite you for more exciting workshops, present a prototype of an automated policy screening tool, add new BLSI online courses to assist policy makers in making policies fit for the digital age. In 2022 we are counting on you to also share your BLSI insights with the community on the Joinup platform.

We wish you very happy holidays and we look forward to welcoming you again in the next Brilliant, Lovely, Spectacular, Impressive year of 2022!

Kind regards,

The Legal Interoperability Team

This has been an eventful a productive year!

Digital-readiness has made news by being included as a key element for a future interoperability policy by the Expert Group, along with being one of the pillars in the better regulation guidelines and toolbox. Our community has extensively grown and kicked-off multiple initiatives - which would not be possible without your active involvement.

Without further ado, we invite you to click here to learn about 2021 accomplishments and plans for 2022!

Supporting recovery and resilience of the EU and its ‘twin transition’, the Commission commits to improve the process of policy-making by incorporating digital aspects in a policy lifecycle. To help the policy makers to adapt to the changes, the Commission provides them with Better Regulation Guidelines and Toolbox. Notably, digital-readiness and digital checks were marked one of the key pillars toward better regulations and expected to make policies more transparent, coherent and inclusive.

Click here to reach more on how digital-ready and digital checks are represented in the Better Regulation agenda.

Following the commitment of the European Commission to present a reinforced interoperability policy by Q2 2022, the BLSI team hosted an online apero to explore opportunities of regulating interoperability in European public sector. Invited speakers discussed the EU mandate to take action on interoperability regulation and possible binding measures, shared their opinions on possible governance framework and evaluated benefits of legal incentives for interoperability.

Click here to learn about the main key takeaways of the session!

Due to the continuous increase of regulatory reporting requirements in the EU legislation and the increasing amount of data, the Regulatory Reporting Community of Practice of the EC looked into the importance of metadata in regulatory reporting. The published issue paper presents knowledge of the experienced community members on the topic, in relation to regulatory reporting, explaining why metadata is important what are the existing challenges in the EC and what good practices can inspire you for the future, with some specific steps to implement them.

Click here to learn more on metadata in regulatory reporting!

The ISA² Programme has evolved into Interoperable Europe – the initiative of the European Commission for a reinforced interoperability policy. The programme was officially closed in April 2021 and was designed to support development of digital solutions to allow for interoperable cross-border and cross-sector public services.

However, the work on enhanced interoperability will continue under a new title ‘Interoperable Europe’. It will be used to unlock potential of data reuse for improved public services, cross-border collaboration and support of sector-specific policy goals. The new initiatives is supported by the Digital Europe Programme.

Click here to learn more on Interoperable Europe initiative!

GovTech has been gaining more and more attention in recent years and in a result of the COVID-19 crisis has become essential to support recovery, resilience and strategic autonomy of the EU. With the adoption of the Digital Europe Programme Work Programme 2022-2023, the EC will soon launch the call for Govtech Incubator. The first GovTech workshop will talk about the opportunities and challenges in the EU GovTech, presentation of the coming incubator and other GovTech initiatives as well as funding opportunities.

Find out more about the workshop here and do not forget to register!