ISA² Programme: collaboration across borders and sectors

With the establishment of the internal market in the European Union, member state administrations need to effectively exchange information beyond their borders in order to be able to comply with public services. Nevertheless, such exchange has posed a challenge since, sometimes, electronically transferring data from one nation to another is not easy. Each national system follows different parameters according to the internal needs of the country that make cross-border administrative procedures into long and costly processes.

However, electronic collaboration among European administrations can speed up and economise such public procedures. In this context, the ISA program of the European Commission started in 2010, which, with an initial budget of 160 million euros, created a joint framework to develop international and interoperable electronic public services for the benefit of citizens and businesses in the EU. This program is based on the interoperability of these services, which not only reduces costs and administrative burdens, but it also contributes to the smooth functioning of the European internal market.

The evolution towards ISA²

ISA² is running from 1 January 2016 until 31 December 2020, replacing the previous ISA programme, supporting both cross-border and intersectoral interaction, as shown in the following video:

With a budget of 131 million euros, distributed over the 5-year duration of the programme, ISA² has a new program designed to achieve the following goals:

• ensure that interoperability activities are well coordinated at EU level;
• develop and operate solutions for the public administrations on the basis of businesses’ and citizens’ needs;
• put in place the necessary instruments to boost interoperability at EU and national level, such as: a revised European Interoperability Framework (EIF); a revised European Interoperability Strategy (EIS); an European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA); and the European Interoperability Cartography (EIC).

This collaborative work  within ISA² resulted in the publication of the version 2.0 of the Core Vocabularies, a set of technical implementation guidelines for the DCAT-AP and the RDF dissemination vocabulary for the EU Budget Vocabulary for representing EU budget data, aimed at increasing government transparency.

Although the program is managed by a specific unit of the European Commission, the DG for Informatics, all member states are actively involved through the ISA² Committee and the ISA² coordination group, which is responsible for ensuring consistency among the program actions.

Achievements regarding semantic interoperability

ISA² is implemented through five work programs, one per year during the period 2016-2020. The member states participating in the 2017 program had to present their proposals last year, providing a solution that is assessed and selected by the ISA² Committee. Once the list of proposed actions is approved, in March 2017, the European Commission will define a work program and allocate a budget for the implementation of the program.

To date, more than 40 actions have been carried out, with special attention to the excellent results obtained by the SEMIC initiative, an action plan to improve semantic interoperability among the different European e-government systems. Within this plan, the ISA² program has developed, along with a group of experts belonging to different institutions of the EU, a set of new data specifications including:

• the DCAT-AP for statistical datasets (StatDCAT), an extension of the DCAT Application Profile to enhance interoperability between descriptions of statistical datasets and open data portals;
• the Core Public Organisation Vocabulary (CPOV), a data model to describe public organisations in the European Union, based on W3C's Organisation Ontology;
• the Core Criterion and Core Evidence Vocabulary (CCCEV), a data model that simplifies the exchange of information between organisations, businesses and citizens in public procurement processes, allowing them to provide the evidence required: CCEV.

In addition, SEMIC continued to provide support on policy matters of different European Commission Directorate-Generals, namely: to DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion through the implementation of a pilot project to link national qualifications systems with ESCO (Skills, Skills, Qualifications and European Occupations); to the Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets DG (FISMA), to improve the standardization of financial data; or the European Food Safety Agency, to implement an information governance policy.

Through the ISA² program, the SEMIC plan has provided an important push to semantic interoperability in the European Union, in addition to a continuous enrichment thanks to its contributions to the Joinup community, which has more than 1,500 members from different Public Administrations and the European Commission Services. In addition to these initiatives, ISA² has provided the impetus for the development of solutions in many other fields such as open data, electronic invoicing or the geospatial industry. As shown in the web section dedicated to the innovative projects developed within this program.