European interoperability framework

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The European Interoperability Framework ( English European Interoperability Framework , abbreviated EIF.), Has the aim of facilitating cross-border and cross-sector interaction between European public administrations and support their cooperation and to facilitate electronic services.

Basics

Interoperability is “the ability of different and diverse organizations to interact for mutual benefit and in the interest of common goals; this includes the exchange of information and knowledge between the organizations involved through business processes supported by them by means of data exchange between their respective ICT systems ”(IT planning council).

Interoperability is a central aspect of e-government . The European Commission drew up after the eGovernment Conference in Como in 2003 a first Interoperability Framework ( European Interoperability Framework v1.0) for the implementation of these objectives within the framework of the program Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens  (IDABC).

As part of the Digital Agenda for Europe that were e-government action plans developed 2011-2015 and 2016-2020. The 2011–2015 Action Plan contained two annexes, the European Interoperability Strategy  (EIS) and the European Interoperability Framework, as the two “key documents” in relation to promoting interoperability. In March 2017, the European Commission published new guidelines for digital public services and a revised implementation strategy as part of the European interoperability framework.

Content of the EIF

aims

The EIF pursues the following objectives:

  • Public administration cooperation at European level
  • direct exchange of information between EU member states
  • provide efficient and effective cross-border e-government services
  • Create cooperation between administrations and citizens

The first sector is called Government to Government  (G2G), the latter Government to Citizens  (G2C). The same applies to Government to Business  (G2B) in relation to companies.

In addition, the EIF is intended to promote the European digital single market . Its main purpose is to act as a driver to promote the foundations for the electronic services of the member states. This measure of developing modern electronic services on site is intended to make Europe more independent of dominant international solutions and to push European security ideas.

25 EIF recommendations

The EIF makes 25 recommendations for implementation. An environment should be created in national and regional interoperability frameworks to make European public services easier to set up. This implementation is carried out by the ISA program (Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations) .

The 25 recommendations of the EIF are divided into the following categories:

  • Basic principles for European public services: the basic principles of the EIF include e.g. B. user focus , accessibility , multilingualism and IT security .
  • Concept model for public services: the concept model provides that complex services are composed of detailed services. The data of these services are taken from basic registers.
  • Levels of interoperability
    • Legal level : defines the legal basis for data exchange ( e-government law )
    • organizational level : the business processes necessary for data exchange
    • content level : describes the value of the data exchanged
    • technical level : the necessary technical systems and standards that are necessary for data exchange
  • Interoperability agreements: This concerns the use of existing standards for establishing interoperability in the four levels mentioned above.
  • Interoperability governance: Interoperability governance describes the management of interoperability projects in a member state.

criticism

The master plan advocates the widespread use of open standards . This was  heavily criticized at the time in the first draft by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), a lobby group of software manufacturers. These saw themselves set back in their commercial interests in offering tailor-made solutions for authorities. The EU did not respond to this criticism in the plan, except that the word “ standard ” (the BSA was threatened that its proprietary industry standards would not be recognized) was replaced by the more far-reaching phrase “ formalized specification ”.

The second version from 2010 was also criticized, but this time by the other side. On the one hand, the same was criticized as later on the free trade agreements CETA and TTIP , namely the negotiations in secret - even though the Commission had explicitly re-introduced the basic principle of transparency (No. 7). Secondly, but was criticized that the concept of openness (Openness) had been further weakened, and puts ( " THEREFORE, European public administrations shoulderstand aim for openness, taking into account needs, priorities, legacy, budget, market situation and a number of other factors, ”which de facto leaves all other options open). At the time, this was interpreted as an indication of how much the European Commission under Barroso gave in to pressure from lobby organizations. Institutions such as the company- related OpenForum Europe saw the new version positively.

Since version 2.0 is generally much less detailed than the 2004 version, and it is only a non-binding recommendation, it can be assumed that the Commission leaves it to the states and national implementations of the interoperability plans (NIFs) to decide freely Software / FRAND / proprietary standards to decide for yourself. In the Declaration on eGovernment ( Malmö Ministerial Declaration , November 18, 2009) , the ministers responsible for eGovernment of the EU members and associates expressed their desire for cooperation, but also made it clear that they wanted to work with companies as well as with NGOs as an economic infrastructure measure for the common market of the EU. The Commission stressed in the paper that it and the Member States must work together.

implementation

National

The recommendations of the Commission are to be incorporated into the National Interoperability Framework  (NIF). By 2014 Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, France, Italy, Croatia, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Hungary and the UK had drawn up national framework plans .

Austria

In Austria, the implementation of the EU framework plans began with the e-government offensive 2003–2005. As a result, most of the upper-level authorities and numerous communities are now electronically networked. The Austrian Interoperability Framework  (AIF 1.0.0) was only created in 2014 as part of the e-government conference of the federal, state and local governments, as recommended by the EU Commission.

One of the clearest introductions for citizens in the context of interoperability is the citizen card as an electronic ID card. Until 2015, the corresponding cards in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia and Spain also met the strict Austrian regulations, so that the ID cards of these countries are also valid ( E-Government Equivalence Ordinance ) . Another milestone is the 2011 population census , which was able to be processed efficiently and cost-effectively thanks to the Austrian network as a pure register census without citizen surveys. One of the most important first achievements in everyday life in the government-to-business sector is financial online , which today enables fully electronic tax returns. The most recent central change is the electronic file  (ELAK) , which is used in the citizen's administrative channels ( one-stop government ).

Switzerland

In Switzerland, the Federal Chancellery launched the Reference eGov CH pilot platform (www.cyberadmin.ch) as early as 2006 to promote interoperability. This was  taken over by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) in 2008 , but discontinued in 2015 because "the pilot has shown that the approach of central data storage and maintenance is hardly feasible in the Swiss federal administration." The implementation of e-government The Swiss strategy (January 24, 2007) is “decentralized but coordinated”. The first framework agreement was passed by the Federal Council and the plenary assembly of the Conference of Cantonal Governments (KdK) in 2007, the second in 2012, the third follows in 2016.

Technical

The interoperability framework is also increasingly beginning to be incorporated into European standardization. So the new CEN / TR 15449 has been Geographic information - Spatial Data Infrastructures (Part 1: Reference Model , 2012) for a common geographic information system created explicitly in terms of this framework.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e TOP 04 Annex KoopGr interoperabilization final report . ( Memento from January 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) it-planungsrat.de. Status: January 5, 2015 (link no longer available)
  2. ^ EIF - European Interoperability Framework for pan-European eGovernment services . ec.europa.eu, June 2009
  3. ^ A b Serge Novaretti, W3C Consortium, IDABC, European Commission: IDABC Program - European Interoperability Framework . (PDF) Presentation at the European W3C Symposium on eGovernment , February 2, 2007 (w3c.es, English).
  4. ↑ European eGovernment Action Plan 2011–2015 Use of ICT to promote intelligent, sustainable and innovative authorities (COM / 2010/0743 final) Brussels, December 15, 2010.
  5. ↑ EU eGovernment Action Plan 2016–2020 Accelerating the digitization of public administration (COM / 2016/0179 final) Brussels, April 19, 2016.
  6. ↑ John Gotze: European Interoperability Framework 2.0 . Blog entry, gotze.eu, December 19, 2010; accessed February 16, 2015
  7. ↑ European interoperability framework: Commission presents new guidelines for digital public services, press release of 23 March 2017
  8. ↑ European Interoperability Framework - Implementation Strategy COM / 2017/0134 final, 23 March 2017.
  9. ^ A b Controversial European Interoperability Framework Announced . In: PCWorld online, December 16, 2010; accessed February 15, 2015.
  10. ^ A b Jochen Friedrich: The new European Interoperability Framework (EIF) - the attempt of an interpretation. In Jochen Friedrich's Open Blog , January 4, 2011.
  11. ↑ a b Novaretti, W3C, IDABC 2007, section Towards a revision , slide 24 ff., Especially slide 25 on the fact that European interoperability is to be built bottom-up by the states.
  12. ↑ a b EU Commission publishes new framework for interoperability . heise open , December 16, 2010.
  13. ↑ http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/european-interoperability-framework-v2--the-great-defeat-3569018/glyn/ (link not available)
  14. ↑ Gotze: European Interoperability Framework 2.0 . Section Quick overview of EIF v2 .
  15. ↑ European Interoperability Framework 2.0 . Section Key EIF observations .
  16. ↑ Represents Google, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat and Deloitte
  17. ^ European Interoperability Framework - a bold move to spread the benefits of open standards and interoperability . ( Memento of February 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) OpenForum Europe, press release, December 16, 2010.
  18. ^ Karsten Gerloff: Assessing the new European Interoperability Framework. Blog entry in Karsten on Free Software , December 17, 2010, section Conclusion .
  19. ↑ Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment approved unanimously in Malmö, Sweden, on November 18, 2009 (PDF) ec.europa.eu (pdf).
  20. ^ Declaration on eGovernment 2009, section Our Shared Objectives by 2015 , 10: Invite third parties to collaborate on the development of eGovernment services. " We will actively seek collaboration with third parties, for example businesses, civil society or individual citizens, in order to develop user-driven eGovernment services "
  21. ↑ “ To help realize the full potential of the digital single market, Member States and the Commission must act together to implement the EIS, taking into account the EIF, in Digital Agenda actions. ”COM (2010) 744, 3. Proposed Actions , p. 8.
  22. ^ Ana Lisboa, Delfina Soares: E-Government interoperability frameworks: a worldwide inventory. Conference paper CENTERIS 2014 - Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / ProjMAN 2014 - International Conference on Project MANagement / HCIST 2014 - International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies, in: Procedia Technology 16 (2014), Appendix A. IFs inventory , p 646 ff (entire article, pp. 638–648, link to the article, PDF , sciencedirect.com, accessed February 14, 2015, p. 10 there).
  23. ↑ a b What happened so far . digitales.oesterreich.gv.at
  24. ↑ Architecture: Austrian Interoperability Framework / AIF 1.0.0 (English): Recommendation reference.e-government.gv.at
  25. ↑ Legal framework for e-government in Austria: e-government equivalence ordinance . digitales.oesterreich.gv.at
  26. ↑ Discontinuation of the Reference eGov CH pilot platform ( Memento from February 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) cyberadmin.ch; accessed February 26, 2015.
  27. ↑ Thomas Schärli, Peter Opitz; Intercantonal working group Services for Interoperability & Networking (BS, TH, ZG): Work report 2011. ( Memento from February 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) egovernment.ch; accessed February 26, 2015.
  28. ↑ Swiss e-government strategy: implementation . ( Memento from February 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) egovernment.ch
  29. ↑ Framework agreement . ( Memento from February 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) egovernment.ch; accessed February 26, 2015.
  30. ↑ CEN / TR 15449-1: 2012 , Normendetails, bdb.at;
    see. Technical report CEN / TR 15449-1, October 2012, section 5.5 Combination of the European interoperability framework with the architecture reference model for services , p. 16 ( table of contents (PDF) austrian-standards.at; accessed February 16, 2015).