Recommended measure

It is preferable to put in place an IT governance structure that aims to align the different levels of administration within a Member State (for instance federal, regional, local government) and between Member States, taking into account their respective IT policies, needs and capabilities.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should establish and maintain a forum where public administrations can exchange information about their needs, requirements and existing or planned IT solutions.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should identify, describe and publish common business processes for IT solutions that will implement new policies or legislation, in order to reduce implementation time and effort. The common processes should be made public by the time the legislation is adopted.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should support public administrations that run projects with high potential for sharing and reuse. A good way to motivate public administrations with similar needs and requirements to work together is, for example, to provide financial incentives to jointly develop IT solutions, which would create benefits for both sides.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should implement business models that encourage public administrations to use common pools of resources when developing and/or procuring common IT solutions.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should not only pool resources but ensure the availability of specialists in different areas, i.e. project managers, business analysts, enterprise architects, security experts, service managers, interoperability experts, etc. These specialists should work across different public administrations applying the same methods and practices, depending on needs.

Recommended measure

To enable the reuse of IT solutions, central bodies should select appropriate licences and licence templates, and promote their use.

Recommended measure

By providing practical advice in these areas, central bodies can support public administrations dealing with intellectual property rights and licensing issues related to the sharing and reuse of IT solutions. This may include, for example, helping them to better understand the rights and obligations associated with a given solution and to identify whether a third party holds any rights to it.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should encourage the use of common standards and technical specifications in public procurement, for example, by creating a common list of such specifications.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should create a common reference framework for a particular sector or field of interest by creating a portfolio of solutions using a common reference architecture. This makes it easier for public administrations to understand what solutions exist and to reuse them.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should offer generic, interoperable and reusable building blocks that are less bound to specific requirements and have a greater potential to be reused.

Recommended measure

To encourage reuse, functionalities could be offered as services and/or accessed via an API. This would decrease the effort required to share and reuse solutions and would help to avoid the costs associated with adapting a solution to meet a public body’s needs.

Recommended measure

In general, test environments are useful for public administrations that are considering reusing a solution because they let them check whether the solution and existing systems are interoperable. Central bodies are in a good position to consider providing testing environments and organising plugtests, thereby creating an optimal setting for innovation in the area of public sector IT solutions.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should support public administrations that want to publish their IT solutions by providing them with the needed registries. These should preferably be part of a central European registry (see also section 8.1), thereby maximising their reuse potential. Central bodies should make sure that registries use standard ways of describing and categorising solutions, such as ADMS-AP and EIRA, and that they support multiple languages.

Recommended measure

Common registries should help public administrations assess the extent to which their solutions are reusable and can be included in a registry. Using a standard checklist to validate the solutions’ compliance levels against the reusability criteria required by the registry would facilitate this.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should organise thematic workshops focusing on the sharing and reuse of solutions (e.g. around specific themes, such as e-Identification, geospatial solutions, etc.) in order to raise awareness and develop the necessary expertise across public administrations.

Recommended measure

Public servants should take part in study visits and twinning projects with other public administrations. Collaborating with other bodies would help public administrations to understand common needs and encourage the sharing and reuse of solutions.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should announce upcoming public APIs in order to make solution vendors aware of interfaces through which they could develop solutions. This would facilitate the timely and efficient delivery of solutions that meet public administrations’ needs.

Similarly, central bodies should disseminate information about requirements for upcoming shared services to offer solution vendors insights into the future needs of public administrations. This will allow vendors to plan ahead for their possible business opportunities.

Recommended measure

Central bodies should support the use of internationalisation principles among public administrations by raising awareness and promoting good practice.