Across Europe, multiple problems impede public administrations in building truly interoperable digital public services. For this reason, public servants, interoperability experts, and digital practitioners from across Europe and beyond gathered online on 9 and 10 June 2026 to follow the third edition of the Interoperable Europe Academy Seasonal School.
Project managers Bernard Claes and Alina-Maria Brebenel are the current team leads of the Interoperable Europe Academy. Their goal for this year’s edition was to investigate what it really takes to build cross border digital public services, from start to finish.
“Across Europe, administrations face very real challenges”, Mr. Claes said. “Connecting different IT systems, navigating diverse legal frameworks, working across languages, organisational cultures and levels of government, and keeping pace with fast-moving technologies among other things. With this year’s edition, we acknowledge that complexity openly and tackle it head-on. Not with abstract theory, but by focusing on how administrations can move from ambition to delivery and build digital public services that genuinely work across borders, sectors and administrations.”
The first day
The two days of the Seasonal School centred around a five-step process in building Interoperable Europe public services from start to end.
Firstly, the Seasonal School focused on what is needed to define clear requirements for a new public service. This search is not only characterised by one own’s policy needs, but also by considering the digital aspects of a public service from the start (digital-ready policymaking) and assessing via the Interoperability Assessment Toolbox which kind of requirements might negatively affect data exchange with other public administrations.
Secondly, starting from scratch is often not needed when building your digital public service. To illustrate this point, seasonal school participants were introduced to the EU Interoperability Solutions Catalogue and the EU Open Source Solutions (OSS) Catalogue. While both catalogues often overlap in offering solutions that are open source, the former specialises in reusable solutions that enable cross-border interoperability of a public service in a legal, organisational, semantic and/or technical way. The OSS catalogue act as the central gateway for public administrations across Europe to discover open-source tools to accelerate their digital transformation.
Special attention was also given to the technical architecture frameworks of EIRA and eGovERA in facilitating the reuse of existing IT solutions and modules for digital public services.
The Seasonal School concluded its first day by looking at step 3, the ways in which administrations can set up cooperation and governance around initiatives concerning interoperability effectively. Special attention was given to:
- the European Commission’s PM² methodologies,
- the role of the Interoperable Europe Community,
- organisational perspectives in digital public service development, and
- peer-learning policy briefs of the Interoperable Europe Academy.
The second day
The second morning of the Seasonal School was dedicated to applying the chosen interoperability-enhancing solutions for digital public services, and to making those solutions usable, shareable, and aligned with the relevant EU frameworks.
Participants were guided through:
- the Interoperable Europe Board’s guidelines regarding the sharing and reusing of interoperability solutions in the best way possible,
- the significance and characteristics of public services with good semantic interoperability,
- the way the CAMSS framework can be used to assess the compliance of standards and specifications in the field of ICT with the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), and
- the ways in which GovTech and innovation support the development and uptake of interoperability solutions by public administrations in the EU.
When public services are created, it is crucial to retain their interoperability over time. For this reason, the fifth and last round of presentations revolved around making interoperable Europe public services sustainable.
To this end, participants were introduced to:
- the Interoperability Test Bed as a tool to test the conformance of IT systems against semantic and technical specifications,
- the way the European Commission monitors interoperability across the EU and its accompanying portfolio of related initiatives
- and the latest research results from the Hague University of Applied Sciences on the skills and challenges that come around regarding the implementation of interoperable public services.
The Seasonal School participants: enthusiastic, intelligent and sociable
Despite the substantial amount of information covered over the two days, participants proved themselves to be excellent learners. Following an online quiz of 30 questions, the entire top 10 was comprised of participants who scored 80% or more. The ultimate winner, Ziggy Vanlishout (Digital Strategy Advisor at Digitaal Vlaanderen) even achieved a perfect score.
The closing remarks of the 2026 Seasonal School were delivered by Cristina Cosma, the Deputy Head of the Interoperability and Digital Government Unit (Unit B.2) within the European Commission's Directorate-General for Digital Services (DG DIGIT).
Ms. Cosma congratulated all participants, speakers, and organisers for the journey they undertook to make public services work better through interoperability. “Not only did we learn a lot from the presentations, but also from each other,” Ms. Cosma said. “Your lively exchanges really help strengthen the growing community that is at the basis of our work."
Ms. Cosma also called upon participants to stay connected with Interoperable Europe and with one another, to continue learning through the Interoperable Europe Academy, and to share their experiences further.
While the Seasonal School will return in 2027, the next major Interoperable Europe event bringing together interoperability practitioners and peers will be its flagship conference SEMIC 2026, taking place on 30 November in Dublin. This year’s theme is: “Interoperable Europe driving competitiveness.” Registration has opened.
More information on the Seasonal School, including links to courses related to the topics covered during the event, can be found here.