DIGINNO WP4 seminar “Interoperability by default – the implementation of CEF building blocks” was organized 24 April 2019 in Tallinn by Aalborg University Cph and Estonia’s Ministry for Economic Affairs & Communication. The 43 public & private participants from seven countries and the European Commission
got an insight in the EU process and the implementation of CEF BB’s in the member states
discussed challenges and how cross-border collaboration could help tackling these challenges
discussed policy recommendations to address to national and EU level.
CEF Building blocks
CEF programme (Connecting Europe Facility) is launched by the European Commission to support development of a digital infrastructure. The building blocks aim to facilitate delivery of digital public (and private) services across borders by ensuring interoperability between IT systems so that citizens, businesses and administrations can benefit from seamless digital public (and private) services wherever they may be in Europe. The CEF building blocks offer basic capabilities that can be used in any European project to facilitate the delivery of digital public (and private) services across borders.
Key takeaways
The seminar confirmed that there is a relatively high adoption of CEF building blocks in the EU member states. In particular the private sector can see the need and also some parts of public sector find them useful. However, important challenges must be addressed to improve the uptake of the building blocks and improve interoperability:
The uptake varies from one country to another. Each country tends to “pick and choose” depending on their national approach, awareness, interest and thematic priorities, leading to a heterogenous implementation.
Building blocks are mostly adopted for domestic use, only very few for cross-border use. This seems to be due to lack of incentives in some parts of public sector where the need is not acknowledged.
What is mostly needed is a cross-border service as a good business case. Once countries agree and prioritize a number of cross-border services, only then technology/infrastructure comes into play. This is what DIGINNO is doing: Selecting four services, agree on process architecture and then considering which technical infrastructure to use.
