Have your say: How to best share and reuse ICT solutions

The Commission’s 10 recommendations, published in the Sharing and Reuse Framework , support public administrations in managing the challenges of sharing and reusing ICT solutions. With suggestions for communication, advice on how to overcome legal barriers, and guidance on technology and organisation, the European Commission intends to increase interaction, exchange and cooperation among European public administrations.

The goal of the recommendations is to reduce costs, increase efficiency and foster interoperability of ICT systems, leading to improved eGovernment services that boost Europe’s digital economy.

For each recommendation, the framework provides practical tools that public administrations are free to use, such as the European Commission’s machine translation service, the Joinup repository and the European Union’s public software licence EUPL.

Leading examples
Europe already has many good examples of public administrations that share and reuse ICT solutions. This includes e-Bourgogne, supporting the administrations in the respective French region in the procurement of ICT services.  In Spain the government's Centre for Technology Transfer maintains a successful repository for ICT solutions.  And in Belgium’s IMIO project, 150 public administrations in the Walloon Region are pooling their ICT solutions and services. Similar pooling of resources for software development or ICT services can be found in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.

Next steps
The deadline for submitting comments on the Sharing and Reuse Framework recommendations is 29 June 2016. The results of this survey will be available in July; publication of the final version of the recommendations is foreseen later this year.

To participate in the consultation, please go here.

For further information: Draft Sharing and Reuse Framework.