FAQ

The Portal is the European Commission's one-stop shop for interoperable, open, and free digital government ICT solutions and an online space for e-Government professionals and enthusiasts to share and learn about digital public services and initiatives. The Portal covers the hands-on aspects of interoperability.

It’s the European Commission’s initiative for a reinforced interoperability policy showcasing news and events about government-related interoperability, along with initiatives and best practices that support the digitalisation of EU public administrations. Interoperable Europe covers the policy angle of interoperability.

The platform is freely accessible to everyone. All users can view and browse content on the Portal, but only registered users can contribute content and interact with the communities – for more details regarding registered accounts see section Account Information.

Through the Portal, the European Commission provides a collaborative platform to accelerate the uptake of interoperable EU public services and promote the European digital single market. The Portal offers many advantages to different groups of users including the public administrations (lower development costs, dissemination of best practices, reusable solutions for free, powerful search tools, information exchange), the private sector (learning about public administrations’ needs, reference materials, development of better products), academia and citizens (eGovernment factsheets, studies, use cases). 

Firstly, to share your solution easily with other professionals but also to promote it across Europe and beyond (showcase your solution, get more visibility, grow your professional network). Secondly, you can build a community around your tool and regularly inform its users (raise awareness, communication and disseminate, expand your knowledge). And, thirdly, the Portal serves as a source of inspiration and facilitates collaboration between public administrations (improve public services, keep abreast, be innovative).

The Portal gathers and spreads information on solutions for modern public administrations, businesses and citizens (latest news and events, relevant publications, state of play in the field). It also works as a catalogue of IT tools that brings significant benefits to users (ready-to-use solutions, proven by other public administrations, saving time and money). Users can also get in contact with other professionals and start a discussion on a topic or solution of common interest (exchange of best practices, collaboration opportunities, community building).

To share content on the Portal you must have an account and sign in to the platform. You can propose content such as news, events, documents, etc. (see section Usage Information), participate in discussions, and add comments to existing content. As a collaborative platform, the Portal and its communities benefit from user contributions.

The Portal uses the European Commission’s EU Login authentication service which allows authorised users to access a wide range of Commission web services, using a single email address and password. 

To sign in on the Portal using your existing EU Login account, click on the “Sign in” menu option (located at the top right corner).

If you do not have an EU Login account then click on the “Get started” menu option (located at the top right corner). For more information about EU Login and its advantages, you can find additional details here.

Important note: The Portal is not responsible for nor can manage your EU Login account. If you experience any issues accessing your EU Login account, then you should contact the EU Login Team.

To reset your Portal password, visit EU Login’s Change password page. Note that this change will affect all Commission web services that use your EU Login account.

You can refer to the Portal’s Legal Notice and Privacy Statement for more details on how we process and handle your account and associated data.

To delete your Portal account you should follow these steps:

• Sign in on the platform
• Click on the user icon at the top right corner and select the menu option “My account”
• Click on the icon with the three dots located in the banner area, and select the menu option “Edit”
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the button “Cancel account”
• On the confirmation page, click on the “Confirm” button

Important notes: 

• This action cannot be undone 
• This action only affects your Portal account. It will not delete your EU Login account that you use on other Commission web services

The Portal revolves around Collections. Collections provide a distinct, easy way to group and access content that is related to a specific subject field or domain. All Portal created content resides under a collection (i.e., solutions, documents, news, events etc.). Collections could also be considered as communities in which users collaborate around a common topic or domain, and where they can contribute by creating, sharing and commenting on content, and engage in virtual discussions with the community.

Solutions are special content types that are created within a Collection. In contrast to all other one-dimensional Joinup content items (i.e., documents, events, news etc.), a Solution provides its own internal structure. This includes a dedicated space for a specific project (i.e., software, guidelines, standards, etc.), numerous community features (including the regular Portal content items such as news, events, etc.) and a versioning system (each new version of the project can be published as a new release). A Solution (and its content within) reside under – and relate to – a Collection.

The short answer is that, in most cases, a Collection already exists on the Portal that relates to the domain you wish to use for your requirements. In such cases, we strongly advise to take advantage of this fact, since such Collections are usually well-established with a lot of members and daily visitors, providing a wider exposure to the content you will create in them. (If you believe your requirements warrant the creation of a new Collection, you can contact us for information on the process).

The main benefit of being a Collection or Solution member is the ability to create content, as well as receive notifications concerning updates that occur within the Collection or Solution. 

To become a Collection member you first need to sign in the Portal. Then, locate and enter the Collection you wish to become a member of. In the banner area, located at the top of the Collection page, click on the “Join this collection” button. In the popup window that appears select whether you wish to receive notification or not concerning the Collection. 

Important note: If the Collection is moderated (in which case the membership request needs to be approved by the Collection managers), the banner areas’ button label will change to “Membership is pending” and you will receive thereafter, by e-mail, the approval or rejection notice.

To become a Solution member, make sure you are signed in the Portal and have entered the Solution. Then follow the same steps mentioned above for the Collection – the only difference is that the Solution’s banner area button will state “Subscribe to this solution”.

To add content to a Collection or Solution you first need to be a member of that Collection or Solution.

To add content to a Collection or Solution, click on the orange circle icon with the white plus sign in its centre, located at the bottom right of the banner area. In the drop-down menu that appears, click on the content type that you wish to create. This action will open the selected content type’s Editor page in which you should enter all required information. The proposed content should be relevant to the eGovernment/digital transformation domain and should not promote private businesses or for-profit products or services.

The Portal allows only one owner role per Collection or Solution. However, the facilitator role can be assigned to multiple members of a Collection or Solution.

The Portal's current access rights model does not allow you -- a Collection owner or facilitator -- to edit a Solution created by another user in your collection. In order to do so, you will need to contact the Solution owner and request to be added as a facilitator to the Solution.

The Portal supports the roles of Member, Author, Facilitator, and Owner. For a detailed matrix that outlines the permissions granted to each of these roles you can consult this Member permissions table

Joinup offers multiple ways in which you can discover new and updated content, directly from its Home Page:

• Browse by main Topics – Discover content related to popular thematic areas (called Topics), offering an alternative method of navigating around Joinup, too. Each topic showcases content curated by both the Joinup Team and the respective Joinup communities.
• View curated content highlights – See what’s drawing attention on Joinup by checking the curated sections that the Joinup Team updates frequently. 
• Explore platform content – The “Explore” section offers a quick look at the most recent additions to Collections, Solutions, News and Events.

Joinup also offers the following additional ways to learn about new and updated content:

• Search for specific content – Use the Advanced Search page to narrow down your scope of content. With the help of the many filters, you can finetune the results to match your requirements.
• Receive notifications for new/updated content – Keep track of things by subscribing to your favourite Collections/Solutions and receive emails with the latest news and updates occurring there. (You can adjust your subscriptions – i.e., notification frequency, type of content updates etc. – by going to your My subscriptions page).

The Portal offers the following search-based functionality:

• Advanced Search page – Allows the use of filters for finding and sorting platform-wide content.
• Search within Collections/Solutions – Allows the use of filters for finding and sorting Collection-/Solution-specific content. This search is enabled by clicking on the magnifying glass icon at the top right in a Collection/Solution.

The Portal offers an interactive user tour to make you familiar with the basic functionality of the user interface. You can enable this feature by going to the Home Page, scrolling down to the footer area, and under "HELP AND SUPPORT” selecting the option “Take a tour”.

You can contact the Portal Support Team by clicking on the Contact Joinup Support link, located in the footer area (under "HELP AND SUPPORT”) of every Portal web page. Alternatively, you can copy and paste the following URL into your web browser’s address bar: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/contact

The Support Centre offers various services on legal, semantic, technical and organisational aspects to improve the interoperability of European digital services. You will find appropriate training courses, frameworks, architectures, core vocabularies and reporting on interoperability for public administrations. 

The Portal offers a unique tool for handling open source licences. The Joinup Licensing Assistant (JLA) enables copyright owners to quickly identify suitable licences for distributing their software or data, offers improved categorisation with direct links to each licence's SPDX (Software Package Data Exchange) entry, allows the comparison of up to five licences, and keeps licence information always up-to-date.

Moreover, JLA's new feature -- the Compatibility Checker -- helps you verify that your "use" (or inbound) licences are compatible with your "distribute" (or outbound) licences. In case of conflicts, the Compatibility Checker will assist you in tackling the requirements imposed by the conflicting licences by identifying compatible options.

You can submit your legal-/licence-related questions to the Portal's Legal Support Expert by clicking on the Contact Portal Support link, located in the footer area (under "HELP AND SUPPORT”) of every Portal web page , and selecting in the "Category" drop-down field the value "Legal issue".