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Interoperability and community building for transformational eGovernment

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Author: Sylvia Archmann, Just Castillo Iglesias. The latest technological progress has unveiled the enormous capacity for ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to become a leading force in the modernisation of public administration and has raised the appearance of Transformational eGovernment.

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Interoperability and community building for transformational eGovernment The latest technological progress has unveiled the enormous capacity for ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to become a leading force in the modernisation of public administration and has raised the appearance of Transformational eGovernment. The potential for ICT in public affairs is constantly increasing. Considering the countless number of web-based applications – each time increasing in complexity – that have been developed in the last five or six years and are now widespread and popular for private use, one can only think of the possibilities this can offer to public administration and governments. Many different initiatives and projects are currently being carried out across Europe, aiming towards the promotion of eID and interoperable solutions. Interoperability is, to this date, perhaps one of the most challenging issues for the future of eGovernment in Europe. The development and further implementation of cross-border solutions, which constitute an essential pillar to enhancing the mobility of citizens and businesses in the internal market without encountering electronic barriers, is strictly dependent on interoperability; the best way to ensure its success is through the exchange of experiences and communities of practice. Sylvia Archmann Just Castillo Iglesias European Institute of Public Administration Keywords Interoperability, key enablers, eID, eIDM, Transformational eGovernment, communities of practice, COP, identification management, citizen-centric government Governments should put efforts into inclusion, building trust in the new technologies and the promotion of, at least, basic eSkills. European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 1 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X
1 Transformational eGovernment ICT have impregnated many aspects of our everyday lives, having an impact on our ways of communicating, looking for and sharing information. A myriad of web-based applications have appeared in the last few years, constituting what is known as ‘the social internet’, providing powerful tools for planning, networking and communicating. The potential of this technology for its use in government or public administration is enormous, both in the day-to-day work of policy making – enabling for instance, more direct contact between politicians or law makers with the centres of expertise – and in the way that public administrations communicate and provide services to citizens. The adaptability of these internet applications, plus its availability across multiple platforms, are an important source of inspiration for similar applications in public services. The power of eGovernment and ICT to change government and administration has given rise to the concept of Transformational eGovernment. The idea first appeared in the early 2000s in Belgium’s eGovernment Strategy, focusing on the use of eGovernment to adapt governmental services to the needs and actions of citizens. Later on, the idea of “Transformational eGovernment” found its place in an initiative by the UK’s Cabinet, launched in 2005 under the name “Transformational Government Enabled by Technology” (UK Government, 2005). This initiative also aimed to improve the delivery of services emphasising the use of ICT, thus making them fit for the 21st Century. Transformational eGovernment, thus foresees, in the first place, the delivery of public services through the internet, and the re-design of public services around the citizen, instead of according to the needs of the administration (citizen-centric); secondly, it encompasses the move towards a culture of shared services (standardisation and simplification of procedures fomenting the culture of sharing and collaborating); and thirdly, it aims to strengthen public employees’ professionalism and skills, thus leading to a knowledge-powered change within the government’s administration. Besides this, the extension of public service delivery towards ICT seems to be the winning bid for the future of public administration in Europe. Everyday we are seeing more initiatives, pilots, programmes, etc. aimed at developing solid bases on which administrations can cooperate and share information in order to achieve fully functioning cross-border and pan-European1 solutions. Nevertheless, the preconditions for Transformational eGovernment to become a reality are not only technical (i.e. developing the right software or systems), but also organisational, social and cultural: spreading ICT skills2 (EIPA, 2005), for instance, has a very important role to play in making Transformational eGovernment a success. Rethinking public administration and modernising it in a way that makes the delivery of public services faster, more reliable, and less burdensome, is, thanks to ICT, something very positive that can increase productivity of the public sector. Yet at the same time, it depends closely on the fact that citizens have access to computers with internet connection and they actually know how to use them. Similarly, citizens have to be assured that the new way of obtaining services from the administration is not only fast, but also secure. Governments should put efforts into inclusion, building trust in the new technologies and the promotion of, at least, basic eSkills. 2 Key enablers: eIDM 3 & interoperability The i2010 eGovernment Action Plan of 2006, which aimed to accelerate the benefits of eGovernment for citizens and businesses whilst ensuring that eGovernment at national level does not create new barriers for the internal market, established a list of five top priorities to achieve these goals: no citizen is left behind; making efficiency and effectiveness a reality; implementing high-impact key services; putting key enablers in place; and strengthening participation and democratic decision making. Among those, the Action Plan paid special attention to the importance of putting in place the key enablers. The term key enablers refers to the infrastructure that allows eGovernment services to function properly, for instance, interoperability is considered a generic key enabler. To put it in the words of the European Commission, “Key enablers are the glue that binds eGovernment together” (European Commission, 2007). 1 ‘Pan-European services’ refers to cross-border services encompassing the whole of the EU. 2 Also commonly referred to as eSkills. 3 Interoperable electronic identification management. European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 2 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X
The key enablers foreseen by the Action Plan are eIDM to access public services, the electronic authentication of documents (eSignature) and electronic archiving. These key enablers would allow cross- border projects to have major visibility by putting material tools directly into the hands of citizens. Hence, the Member States agreed to enable by 2010 secure systems for mutual recognition of national electronic identifiers for websites and public administration services. In the case of eID as a way to access public services, interoperability is a crucial pillar; not only at the national level among different authorities or levels of government, but also across Europe in order to move towards cross-border services. A popular example of what it intends to achieve is that of a retired Belgian citizen spending the summer months on the Spanish coast. Thanks to cross-border interoperable solutions, this person should be able, from the Spanish administration’s internet portal and his Belgian eID card, to access his national services – depending on the Belgian authorities (i.e. his pension or social security services) – as well as the services offered by the municipality where he is staying in Spain. Even though this scenario is not yet completely a reality, several pilot projects are currently being set up involving various European countries testing the interoperability of systems in order to arrive at recommendations for the specifications of a common standard. Despite the hopes put on such projects by the European Commission and the Member States, their great complexity appears to be not only in technical terms, but also in the semantics (systems belonging to different administrations and different Member States should understand the same meaning of the data they are processing) and on the different levels of trust that have a direct impact on the ease by which different instances of government and other relevant stakeholders cooperate. By promoting interoperability of systems across Europe – and even with more relevance in the case of cross- border interoperability – stakeholders need to take into account that different countries understand different things under the concept of eID, and that the objectives are to help systems to work together, rather than replacing each country’s own way of organising itself. Under the concept of eID, for instance, some countries use electronic ID cards, some use passports; for all of them, eSignature is not so closely linked to eID as in others. Therefore, the exchange of experiences between different stakeholders, whether they belong to the public or the private sector, and members of research centres and academia should be encouraged in order to enhance collaboration and better cooperation for interoperability. There has so far been enormous progress in the promotion of interoperability, both at EU and at the national levels. Following the publication in 2004 of the first version of the EIF (European Interoperability Framework), which is currently under revision, many Member States have developed their own initiatives and other sets of practice guidelines to make their administrative structures fit for collaboration. The importance of interoperability lies in its potential benefits (Archmann & Kudlacek, 2008). Therefore, identifying the settings when interoperability becomes indispensable is an important step in helping to work towards finding common solutions. The MODINIS Study on Interoperability (EIPA et al., 2007), of which EIPA was one of the authors, identified the following five scenarios in which interoperability is crucial and should, thus be promoted: − Firstly, between the different services under the same client, namely the grouping of services (for example, according to life events or problematic situations) in order to save resources or to improve the quality of service (one-stop government); − Secondly, among the different stages of a supply chain that is producing one or more services, for instance, when a single service cannot be produced entirely by a single agency, there is a need for interoperability between data workflow and input from other agencies and offices; − Thirdly, namely among the agencies in different geographical areas, interoperability refers to the direct transfer of data from the system of one administration to another administration system (mainly geographical); − Fourthly, among the directory services or documents, namely interoperability between local directories, common metadata about services, as well as algorithms to locate the right agency. One crucial question concerns the common descriptors for services and agencies. European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 3 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X
− Finally, in supplementary services (identity management, digital signature, etc.). Disclosing these five scenarios in which interoperability has such a prominent role was among the most relevant results of the MODINIS study – a fact that is further supported by the number of initiatives, pilot programmes, etc. that have appeared throughout Europe since its publication, and that are focusing on eliminating the shortcomings that make the development of interoperable solutions more difficult. According to our compromise with the future of eGovernment in Europe, EIPA has been active throughout 2008 in an initiative called “Connecting Public Services Communities” (EIPA & Politech Institute, 2008). This initiative was launched in response to a necessity to establish a community of practice on interoperability to facilitate the networking, dialogue and the exchange of experiences among the most relevant interoperability and eGovernment stakeholders in Europe, and to help establish a trust scenario where the obstacles to overcome can be discussed. With “Connecting Public Services Communities” we acknowledge the importance of sharing experiences among practitioners involved in cross-border services, members of the academia, and other relevant stakeholders as a means for the success of such services. The initiative was launched at the Bled eConference (Slovenia) in June 2008, and continued with a second roundtable in Paris during the World e-Democracy Forum. Furthermore, the most relevant cases and experiences shared during those two meetings have been published in an especially dedicated edition of Politech Institute’s European Review of Political Technologies. During the initiative, efforts on interoperability of different natures have been put on the table: from the development of the Lithuanian National Interoperability Framework following the European Interoperability Framework (European Commission, 2005), to currently ongoing pan-European pilot projects, such as the STORK project (European Commission, 2008b) on interoperable eIDs or the PEPPOL project on eProcurement (European Commission, 2008a). Among the many lessons learned, the cases seen have taught us about the utmost importance of those aspects of interoperability that go beyond technology. A practical totality of the over 20 invited stakeholders have stressed that taking into account the multidimensionality of interoperability (semantic, technical and organisational), is one of the crucial success factors for their projects. Considering this, as Europe moves towards Transformational eGovernment and it advances towards the creation of more and better interoperable solutions, it is important not to forget that the reason behind all those changes is the will to make life easier for citizens and businesses, as well as to facilitate and enhance their mobility across Europe. Thus, interoperable solutions need to be further developed in Europe, whilst always keeping in mind the concept of Transformational eGovernment. Introducing new services and innovative ways for citizens and businesses to interact with public administration and to get their public services delivered is something truly positive. However, it should never create new burdens or difficulties for them, especially in the short term. Our experience tells us that collaborating and sharing best practices to be able to learn from them is the right way to go. The exchange of experiences and the creation of communities of practice such as “Connecting Public Services Communities” can provide some help towards this. 3 Concluding remarks This article aims to draw practitioners’ attention to the most common trend in European public administration towards eGovernment: moving towards a culture of citizen-centric government, bidding strongly on the use of ICT for the delivery of services, and providing a more helpful and more efficient administration. This is known as Transformational eGovernment and it depends strongly on the success of interoperability in Europe; acting as a generic key enabler for more advanced services to appear, including cross-border services that even aim to reach a pan-European scope. In the article we have seen the utmost importance of those interoperability aspects that go beyond technicalities such as key success factors for advancing in the creation of interoperable solutions and contributing to making cross-border eGovernment services a reality. It is only a matter of time until pan-European interoperable eGovernment will become a reality; we will surely see it in the near future. However, reaching this point involves a long road ahead and plenty of work to do, in which a huge number of actors are involved, as well as an important number of already existing national or local enablers who will have to interoperate with each other. Thus, the key factors for success are the exchange of experiences and promoting common work among the main stakeholders through communities of practice such as “Connecting Public Services Communities”. European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 4 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X
European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 5 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X List of references Archmann, S. & Kudlacek, I. (2008). Interoperability and the exchange of good practice cases. European Journal of ePractice, no. 2 Feb. 2008. http://www.epracticejournal.eu/volume/2/document/4338 EIPA (2005). Commissioned by the Luxembourg Presidency of the EU. Study on Organizational Changes, Skills and the Role of Leadership required by eGovernment. Maastricht. http://www.epractice.eu/document/2935 EIPA et al. (2007). Study on Interoperability at Local and Regional Level. Final Version. http://www.epractice.eu/document/3652 EIPA & Politech Institute (2008). Connecting Public Services Communities. European Review of Political Technologies, vol. 7, October 2008. http://www.epractice.eu/document/5184 European Commission (2005). European Interoperability Framework for pan-European eGovernment Services. http://europa.eu.int/idabc/3761 European Commission (2007). Key Enablers. http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/egovernment/policy/key_enablers/index_en.htm European Commission (2008a). PEPPOL – Pan European Public Procurement on-line. Press release IP/08/785, 23 May 2008. European Commission (2008b). Stork Project – Secure identity across borders linked. Press release IP/08/824, 30 May 2008. UK Government (2005). Transformational Government Enabled by Technology. Cabinet Office. London. http://www.cio.gov.uk/transformational_government/strategy/ Authors Sylvia Archmann Seconded National Expert EIPA http://www.epractice.eu/people/11942 Just Castillo Iglesias Research Assistant EIPA j.castillo@eipa.eu http://www.epractice.eu/people/13591 The European Journal of ePractice is a digital publication on eTransformation by ePractice.eu, a portal created by the European Commission to promote the sharing of good practices in eGovernment, eHealth and eInclusion. Edited by P.A.U. Education, S.L. Web: www.epracticejournal.eu Email: editorial@epractice.eu The texts published in this journal, unless otherwise indicated, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-NoDerivativeWorks 2.5 licence. They may be copied, distributed and broadcast provided that the author and the e-journal that publishes them, European Journal of ePractice, are cited. Commercial use and derivative works are not permitted. The full licence can be consulted on http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

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Interoperability and community building for transformational eGovernment

  • 1. Interoperability and community building for transformational eGovernment The latest technological progress has unveiled the enormous capacity for ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to become a leading force in the modernisation of public administration and has raised the appearance of Transformational eGovernment. The potential for ICT in public affairs is constantly increasing. Considering the countless number of web-based applications – each time increasing in complexity – that have been developed in the last five or six years and are now widespread and popular for private use, one can only think of the possibilities this can offer to public administration and governments. Many different initiatives and projects are currently being carried out across Europe, aiming towards the promotion of eID and interoperable solutions. Interoperability is, to this date, perhaps one of the most challenging issues for the future of eGovernment in Europe. The development and further implementation of cross-border solutions, which constitute an essential pillar to enhancing the mobility of citizens and businesses in the internal market without encountering electronic barriers, is strictly dependent on interoperability; the best way to ensure its success is through the exchange of experiences and communities of practice. Sylvia Archmann Just Castillo Iglesias European Institute of Public Administration Keywords Interoperability, key enablers, eID, eIDM, Transformational eGovernment, communities of practice, COP, identification management, citizen-centric government Governments should put efforts into inclusion, building trust in the new technologies and the promotion of, at least, basic eSkills. European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 1 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X
  • 2. 1 Transformational eGovernment ICT have impregnated many aspects of our everyday lives, having an impact on our ways of communicating, looking for and sharing information. A myriad of web-based applications have appeared in the last few years, constituting what is known as ‘the social internet’, providing powerful tools for planning, networking and communicating. The potential of this technology for its use in government or public administration is enormous, both in the day-to-day work of policy making – enabling for instance, more direct contact between politicians or law makers with the centres of expertise – and in the way that public administrations communicate and provide services to citizens. The adaptability of these internet applications, plus its availability across multiple platforms, are an important source of inspiration for similar applications in public services. The power of eGovernment and ICT to change government and administration has given rise to the concept of Transformational eGovernment. The idea first appeared in the early 2000s in Belgium’s eGovernment Strategy, focusing on the use of eGovernment to adapt governmental services to the needs and actions of citizens. Later on, the idea of “Transformational eGovernment” found its place in an initiative by the UK’s Cabinet, launched in 2005 under the name “Transformational Government Enabled by Technology” (UK Government, 2005). This initiative also aimed to improve the delivery of services emphasising the use of ICT, thus making them fit for the 21st Century. Transformational eGovernment, thus foresees, in the first place, the delivery of public services through the internet, and the re-design of public services around the citizen, instead of according to the needs of the administration (citizen-centric); secondly, it encompasses the move towards a culture of shared services (standardisation and simplification of procedures fomenting the culture of sharing and collaborating); and thirdly, it aims to strengthen public employees’ professionalism and skills, thus leading to a knowledge-powered change within the government’s administration. Besides this, the extension of public service delivery towards ICT seems to be the winning bid for the future of public administration in Europe. Everyday we are seeing more initiatives, pilots, programmes, etc. aimed at developing solid bases on which administrations can cooperate and share information in order to achieve fully functioning cross-border and pan-European1 solutions. Nevertheless, the preconditions for Transformational eGovernment to become a reality are not only technical (i.e. developing the right software or systems), but also organisational, social and cultural: spreading ICT skills2 (EIPA, 2005), for instance, has a very important role to play in making Transformational eGovernment a success. Rethinking public administration and modernising it in a way that makes the delivery of public services faster, more reliable, and less burdensome, is, thanks to ICT, something very positive that can increase productivity of the public sector. Yet at the same time, it depends closely on the fact that citizens have access to computers with internet connection and they actually know how to use them. Similarly, citizens have to be assured that the new way of obtaining services from the administration is not only fast, but also secure. Governments should put efforts into inclusion, building trust in the new technologies and the promotion of, at least, basic eSkills. 2 Key enablers: eIDM 3 & interoperability The i2010 eGovernment Action Plan of 2006, which aimed to accelerate the benefits of eGovernment for citizens and businesses whilst ensuring that eGovernment at national level does not create new barriers for the internal market, established a list of five top priorities to achieve these goals: no citizen is left behind; making efficiency and effectiveness a reality; implementing high-impact key services; putting key enablers in place; and strengthening participation and democratic decision making. Among those, the Action Plan paid special attention to the importance of putting in place the key enablers. The term key enablers refers to the infrastructure that allows eGovernment services to function properly, for instance, interoperability is considered a generic key enabler. To put it in the words of the European Commission, “Key enablers are the glue that binds eGovernment together” (European Commission, 2007). 1 ‘Pan-European services’ refers to cross-border services encompassing the whole of the EU. 2 Also commonly referred to as eSkills. 3 Interoperable electronic identification management. European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 2 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X
  • 3. The key enablers foreseen by the Action Plan are eIDM to access public services, the electronic authentication of documents (eSignature) and electronic archiving. These key enablers would allow cross- border projects to have major visibility by putting material tools directly into the hands of citizens. Hence, the Member States agreed to enable by 2010 secure systems for mutual recognition of national electronic identifiers for websites and public administration services. In the case of eID as a way to access public services, interoperability is a crucial pillar; not only at the national level among different authorities or levels of government, but also across Europe in order to move towards cross-border services. A popular example of what it intends to achieve is that of a retired Belgian citizen spending the summer months on the Spanish coast. Thanks to cross-border interoperable solutions, this person should be able, from the Spanish administration’s internet portal and his Belgian eID card, to access his national services – depending on the Belgian authorities (i.e. his pension or social security services) – as well as the services offered by the municipality where he is staying in Spain. Even though this scenario is not yet completely a reality, several pilot projects are currently being set up involving various European countries testing the interoperability of systems in order to arrive at recommendations for the specifications of a common standard. Despite the hopes put on such projects by the European Commission and the Member States, their great complexity appears to be not only in technical terms, but also in the semantics (systems belonging to different administrations and different Member States should understand the same meaning of the data they are processing) and on the different levels of trust that have a direct impact on the ease by which different instances of government and other relevant stakeholders cooperate. By promoting interoperability of systems across Europe – and even with more relevance in the case of cross- border interoperability – stakeholders need to take into account that different countries understand different things under the concept of eID, and that the objectives are to help systems to work together, rather than replacing each country’s own way of organising itself. Under the concept of eID, for instance, some countries use electronic ID cards, some use passports; for all of them, eSignature is not so closely linked to eID as in others. Therefore, the exchange of experiences between different stakeholders, whether they belong to the public or the private sector, and members of research centres and academia should be encouraged in order to enhance collaboration and better cooperation for interoperability. There has so far been enormous progress in the promotion of interoperability, both at EU and at the national levels. Following the publication in 2004 of the first version of the EIF (European Interoperability Framework), which is currently under revision, many Member States have developed their own initiatives and other sets of practice guidelines to make their administrative structures fit for collaboration. The importance of interoperability lies in its potential benefits (Archmann & Kudlacek, 2008). Therefore, identifying the settings when interoperability becomes indispensable is an important step in helping to work towards finding common solutions. The MODINIS Study on Interoperability (EIPA et al., 2007), of which EIPA was one of the authors, identified the following five scenarios in which interoperability is crucial and should, thus be promoted: − Firstly, between the different services under the same client, namely the grouping of services (for example, according to life events or problematic situations) in order to save resources or to improve the quality of service (one-stop government); − Secondly, among the different stages of a supply chain that is producing one or more services, for instance, when a single service cannot be produced entirely by a single agency, there is a need for interoperability between data workflow and input from other agencies and offices; − Thirdly, namely among the agencies in different geographical areas, interoperability refers to the direct transfer of data from the system of one administration to another administration system (mainly geographical); − Fourthly, among the directory services or documents, namely interoperability between local directories, common metadata about services, as well as algorithms to locate the right agency. One crucial question concerns the common descriptors for services and agencies. European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 3 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X
  • 4. − Finally, in supplementary services (identity management, digital signature, etc.). Disclosing these five scenarios in which interoperability has such a prominent role was among the most relevant results of the MODINIS study – a fact that is further supported by the number of initiatives, pilot programmes, etc. that have appeared throughout Europe since its publication, and that are focusing on eliminating the shortcomings that make the development of interoperable solutions more difficult. According to our compromise with the future of eGovernment in Europe, EIPA has been active throughout 2008 in an initiative called “Connecting Public Services Communities” (EIPA & Politech Institute, 2008). This initiative was launched in response to a necessity to establish a community of practice on interoperability to facilitate the networking, dialogue and the exchange of experiences among the most relevant interoperability and eGovernment stakeholders in Europe, and to help establish a trust scenario where the obstacles to overcome can be discussed. With “Connecting Public Services Communities” we acknowledge the importance of sharing experiences among practitioners involved in cross-border services, members of the academia, and other relevant stakeholders as a means for the success of such services. The initiative was launched at the Bled eConference (Slovenia) in June 2008, and continued with a second roundtable in Paris during the World e-Democracy Forum. Furthermore, the most relevant cases and experiences shared during those two meetings have been published in an especially dedicated edition of Politech Institute’s European Review of Political Technologies. During the initiative, efforts on interoperability of different natures have been put on the table: from the development of the Lithuanian National Interoperability Framework following the European Interoperability Framework (European Commission, 2005), to currently ongoing pan-European pilot projects, such as the STORK project (European Commission, 2008b) on interoperable eIDs or the PEPPOL project on eProcurement (European Commission, 2008a). Among the many lessons learned, the cases seen have taught us about the utmost importance of those aspects of interoperability that go beyond technology. A practical totality of the over 20 invited stakeholders have stressed that taking into account the multidimensionality of interoperability (semantic, technical and organisational), is one of the crucial success factors for their projects. Considering this, as Europe moves towards Transformational eGovernment and it advances towards the creation of more and better interoperable solutions, it is important not to forget that the reason behind all those changes is the will to make life easier for citizens and businesses, as well as to facilitate and enhance their mobility across Europe. Thus, interoperable solutions need to be further developed in Europe, whilst always keeping in mind the concept of Transformational eGovernment. Introducing new services and innovative ways for citizens and businesses to interact with public administration and to get their public services delivered is something truly positive. However, it should never create new burdens or difficulties for them, especially in the short term. Our experience tells us that collaborating and sharing best practices to be able to learn from them is the right way to go. The exchange of experiences and the creation of communities of practice such as “Connecting Public Services Communities” can provide some help towards this. 3 Concluding remarks This article aims to draw practitioners’ attention to the most common trend in European public administration towards eGovernment: moving towards a culture of citizen-centric government, bidding strongly on the use of ICT for the delivery of services, and providing a more helpful and more efficient administration. This is known as Transformational eGovernment and it depends strongly on the success of interoperability in Europe; acting as a generic key enabler for more advanced services to appear, including cross-border services that even aim to reach a pan-European scope. In the article we have seen the utmost importance of those interoperability aspects that go beyond technicalities such as key success factors for advancing in the creation of interoperable solutions and contributing to making cross-border eGovernment services a reality. It is only a matter of time until pan-European interoperable eGovernment will become a reality; we will surely see it in the near future. However, reaching this point involves a long road ahead and plenty of work to do, in which a huge number of actors are involved, as well as an important number of already existing national or local enablers who will have to interoperate with each other. Thus, the key factors for success are the exchange of experiences and promoting common work among the main stakeholders through communities of practice such as “Connecting Public Services Communities”. European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 4 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X
  • 5. European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu 5 Nº 6 · January 2009 · ISSN: 1988-625X List of references Archmann, S. & Kudlacek, I. (2008). Interoperability and the exchange of good practice cases. European Journal of ePractice, no. 2 Feb. 2008. http://www.epracticejournal.eu/volume/2/document/4338 EIPA (2005). Commissioned by the Luxembourg Presidency of the EU. Study on Organizational Changes, Skills and the Role of Leadership required by eGovernment. Maastricht. http://www.epractice.eu/document/2935 EIPA et al. (2007). Study on Interoperability at Local and Regional Level. Final Version. http://www.epractice.eu/document/3652 EIPA & Politech Institute (2008). Connecting Public Services Communities. European Review of Political Technologies, vol. 7, October 2008. http://www.epractice.eu/document/5184 European Commission (2005). European Interoperability Framework for pan-European eGovernment Services. http://europa.eu.int/idabc/3761 European Commission (2007). Key Enablers. http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/egovernment/policy/key_enablers/index_en.htm European Commission (2008a). PEPPOL – Pan European Public Procurement on-line. Press release IP/08/785, 23 May 2008. European Commission (2008b). Stork Project – Secure identity across borders linked. Press release IP/08/824, 30 May 2008. UK Government (2005). Transformational Government Enabled by Technology. Cabinet Office. London. http://www.cio.gov.uk/transformational_government/strategy/ Authors Sylvia Archmann Seconded National Expert EIPA http://www.epractice.eu/people/11942 Just Castillo Iglesias Research Assistant EIPA j.castillo@eipa.eu http://www.epractice.eu/people/13591 The European Journal of ePractice is a digital publication on eTransformation by ePractice.eu, a portal created by the European Commission to promote the sharing of good practices in eGovernment, eHealth and eInclusion. Edited by P.A.U. Education, S.L. Web: www.epracticejournal.eu Email: editorial@epractice.eu The texts published in this journal, unless otherwise indicated, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-NoDerivativeWorks 2.5 licence. They may be copied, distributed and broadcast provided that the author and the e-journal that publishes them, European Journal of ePractice, are cited. Commercial use and derivative works are not permitted. The full licence can be consulted on http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/