Portal support glossary

A patent is a government-issued and approved document that grants an inventor the exclusive rights to an invention for a fixed period of time. The exclusive rights in reference to patents mean that the patented invention may only be exploited by another party with authorisation by the inventor or IP holder.

A voluntary cooperation mechanism in which interoperability experts from EU Member States evaluate and support a public sector body in another Member State. The purpose of a peer review is to help that body implement Interoperable Europe solutions, strengthen trans-European digital public services, and carry out interoperability assessments. A peer review report is published on the…

A concise document produced by the Interoperable Europe Academy that shares practical experiences, innovative approaches, and transferable solutions to help public administrations improve digital government policies and services across EU Member States.

Private messages are a communication feature of the Interoperable Europe Portal that allows users to exchange direct, one-to-one messages within the platform. They enable confidential discussions, collaboration, and information sharing between users without making the content publicly visible.

The hallmark of proprietary software licences is that the software publisher grants a licence to use one or more copies of software, but that ownership of those copies remains with the software publisher.

The State, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law or associations formed by one or more such authorities or one or more such bodies governed by public law.

Public Sector Tech Watch (PSTW) is the European Commission's observatory dedicated to monitoring, analysing and disseminating the use of emerging technologies (e.g., Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, etc.) within the public sector in Europe.

Publiccode.yml is a metadata standard file, written in the YAML format, that is placed in the root of a software repository to describe public sector software in a structured, machine‑readable way. Its purpose is to provide key information (such as the project title, description, development status, contacts, legal context, dependencies, etc.) so that the software can be easily discovered,…