Joinup, the European Commission’s collaboration platform, helps eGovernment professionals find, choose, re-use, develop and implement interoperability solutions. The inventory includes examples of record-breaking services - such as Spain’s electronic record interchange service (Sistema de Interconexión de Registros). SIR is now handling some 300,000 exchanges per month, a 15-fold growth since its launch in 2012.
SIR, one of the largest ICT infrastructure projects is Spain, is now used by public services all over the country, reports CTT (Centro de Transferencia de Technologica), the Spanish government’s technology transfer centre. The exchange is used by about 25% of all municipalities and nearly all central government organisations, and in all of the country’s autonomous communities except Navarre. The system is also implemented in several of Spain’s universities. “More than 65% of Spanish citizens have a SIR office close to their home,” says CTT.
SIR offers the secure exchange of electronic records between public services, in compliance with Spain’s laws and regulations. The system greatly speeds up government procedures, and is vastly reducing the use of paper. The average SIR transaction is EUR 4 cheaper than a paper-based record exchange, CTT estimates. In 2016, CTT calculated that SIR had helped save some EUR 5 million.
The SIR software is available for free to Spanish public administrations. The Java-based software can be downloaded from the CTT repository.
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From its inception, design and development, SIR was intended to be shared and reused by public services across Spain. Its success shows the value of this strategy. SIR’s architecture, which enables public services of any size to implement the solution, matches many of the recommendations in the European Commission’s report Sharing and Reuse Framework for IT Solutions.
“By promoting the sharing and reuse of IT solutions, public administrations and central bodies improve the interoperability of their IT systems and services, which saves money and increases the quality of eGovernment services. All of this contributes to the development of the EU Digital Single Market and strengthens the EU’s position as a world leader in the digital economy.”
SIR is also included in the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA). This reference architecture is developed by the ISA² programme of the European Commission, classifying and organising building blocks relevant to interoperability, which are used in the delivery of digital public services. The goal is to facilitate interoperability and reuse when developing public services.
More information:
CTT announcement (in Spanish)
SIR at the CTT repository
SIR in the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA)
ePractice news item