Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

The Rapporteur welcomes the Regulation for a high level of public sector interoperability across the Union. The proposal presents a timely and logical step in the evolution of a process that has started in 1994 with the first EU programmes in support of the development and dissemination of interoperability solutions for public administrations and businesses and setting up cross-border digital services infrastructures ‘to enable citizens of the Union, economic operators and regional and local communities to derive full benefit from the setting-up of an area without internal frontiers’

Digital transformation is amongst the highest priorities for public administrations, and Member States are investing heavily in their digitisation. This process does not happen in legal vacuum and in this respect the rapporteur believes that the new Regulation should take due account of legal developments and most importantly in regards of the interoperability requirements to be set in the upcoming Data Act.

While more and more services provided by the EU public sector become digital, their level of interoperability is still insufficient. The Regulation is a very welcomed development to address the need for further progress and in his draft the rapporteur proposes that the annual strategic planning exercise ‘Interoperable Europe Agenda’ should also measure the progress achieved against clear key performance indicators.

Raising the level of Interoperability is a mighty lever in reducing the costs to citizens in interacting with public administrations. It is also critical for reducing the costs of doing business in the EU. To this end the draft report seeks to further strengthen the provisions for accessibility and free of charge access.

The availability and the speed of provision of public services also heavily depend on the ability of public administrations to communicate efficiently with each other. What is harder to measure, but not less important is the value of interoperability for civil rights, digital involvement for all, diversity and democratising public knowledge.

The Rapporteur believes that the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) should further the principle of multilingualism in the public service sector and encourage use of the most advanced technologies (such as artificial intelligence) to preserve linguistic diversity while enhancing efficiency of the exchanges between information systems across language boundaries.

Strengthening public sector interoperability also widens the opportunities for innovation, better planning ahead (e.g. in crisis situations) and improved technological sovereignty of the EU. In this respect the draft suggests a widening of the scope of the regulation beyond only those systems that electronically are delivering public services. All public sector IT systems interacting across borders with each-other should be interoperable not depending on the reason for interaction – providing public service (G2C and G2B) or administration’s internal needs (G2G).

An excellent innovation introduced by the proposal is the new system of peer reviews. To safeguard that it remains a mechanism facilitating mutual learning and sharing of best practices, and not of comparisons mechanism between public entities with very different budgets and staffing numbers, the rapporteur introduced a proposal that the reviews shall be conducted only at the request of a public sector body.

The proposal represents a further step in the development of the EIF which was first established in 2004, by setting up a governance structure to support its development and establishing it as a benchmark for the new interoperability assessments. The Interoperable Europe Board (IEB), overseeing the EIF will now also recommend interoperability solutions, distinguishing them with the label ‘Interoperable Europe solution’. The rapporteur believes that the value of the recommendation as a mark of excellence could be better guaranteed if the IEB can also remove the ‘Interoperable Europe solution’ label, when necessary.

The proposal also formalises and strengthens the ‘Interoperable Europe Community’ already emergent between relevant stakeholders in the field of cross-border and cross-sector interoperability, and re-energises and rebrands their online platform JoinUp, which has already more than 10 years history, as a one-stop-shop ‘Interoperable Europe portal’. In support of the entities sharing and re-using solutions the draft report foresees that the IEB shall adopt clear guidelines to guarantee the ease of use and comparison.

Last but not least the proposal has in its scope the European Institutions, Bodies, Agencies and offices. In this respect the rapporteur believes that the European Parliament should be represented in the IEB.

Member States and the Union have been working for more than two decades to support the modernisation of administrations through digital transformation and foster the deep interconnections needed for a truly European digital space. With this regulation we will be creating a strong legal foundations for the next digital decade.