Brand new Joinup – Access point to thousands of eGov interoperability solutions

Hans Vanderbeke, Joinup Project Manager, Interoperability Unit, Directoare-General for Informatics at the European Commission

Joinup, the platform managed by the European Commission’s ISA² programme, is one of the success stories of the programme. Since its launch in 2011 it has over 25,000 subscribers and more than 30,000 artefacts (software solutions, specifications and frameworks) have been uploaded. Very soon however, the current Joinup will only exist in our memories and in this blog post. 

After 6 years of existence, Joinup, the open platform offering IT developer, architects, business leaders, etc., to promote, discuss, and upload their own proven eGovernment solutions and to download those from others, has undergone a complete remodelling.

To make this change possible, the Joinup team has intensively worked in collecting feedback from the users. We were strongly determined to put the focus on the users. In the end, it is for them for whom we created this platform. Paying especial attention to what works well, what doesn't and what could be improved, we have used user surveys, polls and interviews to find out more about the needs and preferences of our users.

With this valuable feedback, we have completely restructured the platform so that it is more responsive and intuitive. The solutions are now grouped under almost 90 thematic collections. Multi-criteria search is possible now, so that an improved search functionality will be offered. The platform has grown organically and dynamically. Over the years it became clear that we would need to offer our users some more guidance on how to find the information that was most pertinent to them.

And after one year of intensive work, the brand new Joinup, a more user friendly platform, will see the light on 4 October. 

/isa2/file/oldjoinupjpg_enold_joinup.jpg	/isa2/file/newjoinup-rectangalpng_ennewjoinup-rectangal.png
Current Joinup design	New Joinup from 4 October

But what will the new Joinup platform offer you concretely?