by Francisco García Morán, Director-General Informatics
August 2009

We are going through a time where EU Member States are collaborating in most domains, where citizens and businesses are more free to move and operate than ever before, and this is calling for European integration and better governance of eGovernment Services. One way to achieve this is through the use of reliable data definitions and easy-to-implement data exchange formats. These will facilitate communication between public administrations, citizens and businesses.

In June 2008, the European Commission, via the IDABC programme, launched the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe "SEMIC.EU", and at the time I expressed my hopes that it would bring about better support for and more efficient use of scarce resources in the area of Semantic Interoperability.

After just over a year it is fair to say that the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe is living up to these expectations. The Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe provides the tools and the infrastructure needed for Europe-wide coordination and for better governance for semantic interoperability, at all levels of public administration, and we are well on our way to become the single point of contact in this area.

The achievements are quite remarkable:

SEMIC.EU’s repository of re-usable data definitions and data exchange formats ("interoperability assets") has been growing ever since its launch and it is used as a central resource for authorities across Europe. It is especially encouraging to see that national eGovernment bodies are consulting the Centre as a direct access path to other countries’ interoperability assets for eventual implementation of the same or similar solutions.

Many Public Administrations, who are the main focus of this service, have already started to work on semantics in the eGovernment field, either on a national scale and/or also through collaborating with other administrations in communities. Several communities have emerged discussing issues such as eJustice, health, police cooperation and the reuse of SEMIC.EU’s own technology. Different domains include public service registers, geographical data, or ontologies for agriculture and commerce registers, monolingual and multilingual classifications and data models.

The requirements for such developments in the Member States have been responded to via SEMIC.EU and its service, including the online lively exchange of ideas on technical and strategic methods in data modelling.

The eagerness of partner projects and experts to get involved bears witness to the significance of semantics-preserving data exchange. And so does the range of domains they cover: from employment to agriculture, from culture to justice and health.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the Member States for their commitment and active support. The diversity of approaches and ideas, while challenging in any harmonisation endeavour, has proved to be a rich source for the creation of better eGovernment structures for the European Union.

IDABC draws to a close by the end of this year and we are getting ready for its successor programme, ISA (Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations). In this context, we are working with the Member States on their interoperability priorities for the future and it is understood that cooperation in the area of semantic interoperability remains very high on the list of their priorities.