The eGovERA© Upscale is a set of tools developed as part of the eGovERA© environment that support Member States in prioritizing and implementing their eGovernment digital business capabilities.

About the eGovERA©
Together with the EIRA©, the eGovERA© is a key element within the Interoperability Architecture portfolio to support the interoperability of Digital Public Services in Europe.
eGovERA© stands for eGovernment European Reference Architecture. It is a set of specifications directly based on the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA©), which aims to help Public Administrations across Europe. It includes additional, more granular reference architectures and tools to analyse and design Digital Public Services. With eGovERA©, Public Administrations have the guidance they need to create seamless, integrated services in line with EU-wide interoperability standards.
The main purpose of the eGovERA© is to facilitate decision-making and optimise the management of eGovernment portfolios. It provides a structured approach that helps European Public Administrations ensure that their Digital Services are interoperable, meaning they can easily exchange data across borders and sectors.
Who is the eGovERA© serving for?
- European Institutions Policymakers.
- Portfolio Managers.
- Business Analysts.
- Solution/Information/Infrastructure Architects.
- CIOs of Member States.
The eGovERA© solution components

The eGovERA©’s foundation components are a set of reference architectures. There is one business-agnostic reference architecture that covers common areas of all policy domains, and three domain-specific reference architectures tailored to the taxation, customs, and health sectors.
The upscale components of eGovERA© are three additional tools developed as part of the eGovERA© environment that support Member States in prioritizing and implementing their eGovernment digital business capabilities:
1. The eGovernment Digital Business Capabilities Assessment
This self-assessment survey supports Member States through a guided survey designed to prioritize Digital Business Capabilities (DBCs) for specific policy domains. The survey helps decision-makers evaluate each DBC based on several parameters, including:
- National Digital Strategic Fit: How well the capability aligns with the national digital strategy.
- Ability to Support the digital Business Capability: The capability’s potential to support overall digital business capacity.
- Expected Public Value: The anticipated public benefit from implementing the capability.
- Estimated Budget: The projected cost, measured in millions of euros.
2. The eGovernment Portfolio Management Decision Support tool
Once the survey is completed, the results are visualised using the eGovernment Portfolio Management Decision Support tool. This tool allows Member States to further prioritise their selected DBCs by adjusting key variables, such as:
- National Digital Strategic Fit.
- Expected Public Value.
- Ability to Support dBusCap.
By providing a visual representation of the survey data, this tool helps decision-makers better understand how to allocate resources across different policy domains.
3. The eGovernment Digital Transformation Roadmap Support
This upscale component helps Member States create a clear, step-by-step roadmap for implementing their prioritized DBCs.
The roadmap outlines key actions, milestones, and timelines to guide the digital transformation journey, ensuring that Member States can efficiently implement their eGovernment initiatives.
The eGovERA© Ontology
The eGovERA© Ontology describes the overall conceptual model behind the definition of a roadmap for the effective implementation of e-Government Digital Public Services. According to the eGovERA© scope, each policy domain (e.g. Health, Tax, Business Agnostic) digitalisation strictly depends on the maturity of the needed digital business capabilities within an organisation. Digital business capabilities are the key skills and capabilities a Public Administration requires to be sustainable and successful by considering Digital Public Services as the main unit of analysis. Each digital business capabilities is guided by dedicated principles, which summarise the overall objective that the organisation aims to achieve.
The eGovERA© Ontology describes the knowledge representation of eGovERA©. Its components are:
[Domain] Policy domain: scope to which the Digital Public Services applies (e.g. Health, Tax, Business Agnostic).
[SubDomain] Policy subdomain: a specific area of the policy domain that well classifies the Digital Business capabilities and related Digital Public Services.
[DigitalBusinessCapability] Digital business capability: key skills and capabilities of a Public Administration that are required to deliver public value sustainably and efficiently using digital technologies.
[Principle] Architecture principle: the underlying general rules and guidelines for the use and deployment of all IT resources and assets across the enterprise. They reflect a level of consensus among the various elements of the enterprise and form the basis for making future IT decisions.
[Category] Architecture principle category: a specific group of Architecture Principles.
[BCxP]: the Architecture Principles applicable to each Digital Business Capability.
[DigitalPublicService] Digital public service: a service provisioned by a Public Administration in fulfilment of a public policy goal, servicing to users either citizens, businesses or other Public Administrations.
[DPSxBC]: Digital Public Services (DPS) needed to realise each Digital Business Capability (BC).
[ArchitectureBuildingBlock] Architecture Building Block (ABB): element of the architecture model that describes a single aspect of the overall model. An Architecture Building Block describes generic characteristics and functionalities and are used to describe reference architectures, Solution Architecture Templates (SAT) or solution architectures of a specific solutions.
[ABBxDPS] the Architecture Building Blocks (ABB) to be implemented for a specific Digital Public Service (DPS).