How to understand the structure of the Portal

The Interoperable Europe Portal brings together communities, initiatives and resources related to interoperability and digital government. Its structure is based on two main types of content spaces – Collections and Solutions – under which all other content types, such as news, events, discussions and documents, are hosted.

• Collections are thematic spaces that gather content around a specific policy domain, initiative or community (for example, digital government or semantics). They include events, solutions, documents and other relevant content.
• Solutions represent concrete projects, frameworks, specifications or software that support interoperability. Each Solution is created under a Collection, and it can host its own resources and community discussions.

Collections and Solutions are governed differently:

• Collections and Solutions must be proposed by users and are reviewed and approved by the Portal Project Team before publication.
• Content within Collections is moderated by the Collection facilitators.
• Content within Solutions is moderated by the Solution facilitators. Collection facilitators have no moderation rights on Solutions unless they are also added as Solution facilitators.

Only registered users can propose a new Collection or Solution.

• To create a Collection, follow the dedicated How-To on creating Collections on the Portal.
• To create a Solution, follow the dedicated How-To on creating Solutions through the Solution Wizard.

Before creating a new space, first check whether an existing Collection or Solution already covers your topic. Exploring the advanced search helps identify active communities and ongoing initiatives.

Using existing spaces has clear advantages: it builds on established communities, simplifies publishing, and increases the visibility of your content.

If you determine that creating a new space is necessary, consider the following:

• Purpose – is it to gather related initiatives (Collection) and foster an active community or to describe and promote a specific interoperability project (Solution)?
• Audience – is it aimed at a broad community with frequent user engagement activities (suitable for a Collection) or a targeted, small user group around a specific project (suitable for a Solution)?
• Duration – is it intended to remain active long term or linked to a time-bound project?