Promoting sharing and reuse of IT solutions

2016.31 Sharing and reuse

When is this action of interest to you?

You are working in a public administration and you are in charge of providing services based on IT solutions to citizens and businesses.

You are a public administration technical expert or an IT manager in charge of developing and maintaining one or more IT solutions for your organisation.

You are a decision maker in a public administration and you want to increase efficiencies and cut costs, also in the IT domain.

You are a public sector official interested in the delivery of public services through innovative IT solutions.

What is this action about?

To reach their objectives, modern public administrations and public services rely on many different IT solutions that can be:

Software: a complete IT system, application, tool or module
IT services: operated either by a single operator or jointly by various operators

Today, these IT solutions are the backbones of efficient and user-friendly public services. The latter can be developed, implemented and updated faster and more efficiently by using already available IT solutions and common IT services. Exploiting what already exists without reinventing the wheel allows public administrations to build more interoperable and open public services more efficiently. In this respect, sharing and reusing IT solutions represents a concrete application of the reusability principle defined by the updated European Interoperability Framework (EIF).

Overall, sharing and reuse of IT solutions promotes greater interoperability, standardisation, and cooperation among public administrations. It eventually results in more simplified, faster and more efficient administrative procedures while reducing public expenditure and saving time and effort.

What were the objectives?

In line with ISA² objectives, this action seeks to support public administrations in sharing and reusing IT solutions. It does so by:

Proving a Framework for Sharing and Reuse of IT Solutions: this framework contains a number of recommendations for public administration willing to make their IT solutions reusable and/or reuse third parties’ solutions. Furthermore, the framework also provides concrete supporting instruments for these organisations, as well as some key recommendations for central bodies to help them facilitate sharing and reuse between public administrations at lower levels of governance.
Organising a biannual Sharing & Reuse Awards: this contest rewards the most innovative and impactful examples of sharing and reuse of IT solutions between public administrations in Europe.
Organising a biannual Sharing & Reuse Conference: this event provides the opportunity to discuss best practices and lessons learnt on the sharing and reuse of IT solutions among public administrations. Moreover, this action facilitates three collections on Joinup, and manages the communities around them:

What are the benefits?

Lowering overall costs and efforts linked to IT development
Modernising the public sector and higher uptake of the most recent solutions
Increasing the efficiency of the public sector and the quality of the services delivered to businesses and citizens
Increasing interconnection between public authorities at all levels and strengthening capacity to work together
Fostering collaboration between public administrations

Furthermore, by promoting the sharing and reuse of IT solutions, public administrations and central bodies not only benefit at the micro level from an increase of their efficiency, the quality of their services and the interoperability of their IT systems. They also collectively contribute to the achievement of the EU Digital Single Market at the macro level.

What has already been achieved?

Publishing the Sharing and Reuse Framework for IT solutions. An update of the Framework is currently ongoing.
Launching two editions of the Sharing & Reuse Awards, which is a contest for public administrations that co-develop and provide shared IT solutions (Sharing & Reuse Awards 2017 and Sharing & Reuse Awards 2019). The awards aim to facilitate future sharing and reuse by recognising best practices in Europe and showcasing the most impactful and innovative examples of Sharing and Reuse of IT solutions.
Organising the Sharing & Reuse Conference 2017 held in Lisbon, Portugal and the Sharing & Reuse Conference 2019 held in Bucharest. The first aimed at discussing good practices related to sharing and reuse of IT solutions at the policy and practical level while the second focused on discussing open source policies and strategies, and their implementation in EU Members States.
Organising information sessions and training courses in several countries (i.e. Montenegro, Poland, Finland) on the Sharing & Reuse Framework for IT Solutions and its practical applications.
Releasing the Open Project Management Methodology (Open PM²) under this action. Open PM² is a free version of the PM² developed by the European Commission in 2007. Its purpose is to enable project teams to manage their projects effectively, and to deliver solutions and benefits to their organisations and stakeholders.
Taking over the operation of the Open Source Observatory (the OSOR community) on Joinup under the Sharing and Reuse action.
Publishing a new version of the European Union Public Licence (EUPL), while maintaining the collection on Joinup, and expanding the community through workshops and specific guidelines for software developers.
Three Knowledge Sharing Modules providing additional info and practical guidance to the SRF have been made available on Joinup.

What are the next steps?

In 2020, the following activities are planned for the action:

Consultation of the updated Sharing and Reuse Framework with the Members States and its translation to 4 languages
Extension of the study on Member States' policies on OSS – all 35 countries monitored by NIFO and several other on-European countries will be included
Methodology, tools, and services to identify and secure the most critical open source software used across European Public Services
Study on feasible funding mechanisms related to the sustainability of existing and new open source projects. The study will also define the key functionality components of an IT system to receive and asses sustainability funding applications from open source projects
Promotion of the use of open source solutions in the public sector by maintaining the OSOR collection on Joinup and organising webinars and workshops
Hackathon and bug bounty programmes to solve issues of most critical OSS in public sector, in particular targeting software representing an asset for interoperable public services as well as solving interoperability issues
Maintaining the EUPL collection on Joinup and providing legal support for licencing issues
Translation of the EUPL guidelines to 23 languages