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Welcome

 

The EIRA© is a European Commission solution based on the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and the ArchiMate language for modelling, which supports Public Administrations in the analysis and design of interoperable Digital Public Services.

This solution provides useful information and documentation on the EIRA©, as well as its development under the form of releases.

Check out the latest release of the EIRA© (6.1.0), published on May 2024.

EIRA

Context: the European Interoperability Framework (EIF)

The EIF gives specific guidance on how to set up interoperable Digital Public Services. It provides 47 recommendations, which are organised around three main pillars: ​

12 principles

to guide policy-makers in their pursuit of interoperability​

They are included in the European Library of Architecture Principles (ELAP) defining the principles that need to be considered to achieve interoperability

4 interoperability layers (LOST)

that present different aspects of interoperability that should be addressed

1 conceptual model

that aims at designing and delivering integrated public services​

4 Iop layers 20%
  • Legal View – This includes the most salient public policy development aspects, ensuring compliance with legislation when implementing a Digital Public Service.
  • Organisational View – This focuses on organisational and governance aspects, detailing the stakeholders involved and capabilities and business services achieved with the Digital Public Service
  • Semantic View – This addresses how data and information are structured and shared to enable seamless communication between systems.
  • Technical Application View – This covers the application of technical requirements, ensuring that digital solutions consider technical aspects for the end-to-end analysis.
  • Technical Infrastructure View – Contains the most salient infrastructure services that need to be considered to support technical aspects for the infrastructure (i.e. computing hosting, networking, and data hosting) of Digital Solutions.

About the European Interoperability Reference Architecture

The European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA©) is a four-view reference architecture for delivering interoperable Digital Public Services across borders and sectors. It helps define required capabilities as a set of architecture building blocks (ABBs)​ for ensuring interoperability through 1) the analysis of requirements and 2) the design of target solution use cases.

Key concepts

The EIRA© is a reference architecture

This means that the EIRA© is a blueprint/template that provides a recommended framework for designing and implementing systems. This framework entails:

  • Guidance for creating solutions that meet specific needs or objectives.
  • Best practices, standards, and guidelines to create systems that are efficient, scalable, and interoperable.
  • A common language and approach for technology development and deployment that reduces complexity and costs.

This way, the EIRA© operates as a checklist for quality assurance: it ensures quality during the analysis and solution design stages.

The EIRA© requires interoperability enablers

Interoperability enablers refer to the critical success factors that facilitate the seamless integration, communication, and collaboration between different systems, applications or (digital) services, ensuring diverse technologies work together harmoniously for improved efficiency and innovation. 

The implementation of the EIRA© key interoperability enablers is a critical condition to allow and ensure that Digital Public Services are interoperable, as shown in the image:

Iop enablers

The EIRA© Validator

The EIRA© Validator allows users to validate ArchiMate® models against the EIRA©. It is implemented through the Interoperability TestBed, which is is a service offered by the European Commission’s DIGIT to facilitate the conformance testing of IT systems. More information on the Interoperability Test Be and its latest release is available here.

The EIRA© Validator is available here.  

The set of Business Rules for the EIRA© and the eGovERA© can be found in the following links: 

Main characteristics of the EIRA©

  • Common terminology to achieve coordination: Common understanding of the most salient ABBs needed to build interoperable Digital Public Services.
  • Reference architecture for delivering Digital Public Services: A framework to categorise (re)usable Solution Building Blocks (SBBs) of an eGovernment solution.
  • Technology- and product-neutral and service-oriented architecture (SOA) style: A service-oriented architecture style and promotion of ArchiMate® as a modelling language.
  • Alignment with the EIF and the TOGAF®: The EIRA© views correspond to the interoperability levels in the EIF. Moreover, the EIRA© reuses terminology and paradigms from TOGAF® (i.e., architecture patterns, building blocks and views).

Benefits of the EIRA©

  • Development of more interoperable e-Government solutions.
  • Cost-savings due to better assessment of solution portfolios.
  • Cost-savings via increased findability.
  • Machine readability.
  • Facilitated validation using the EIRA© and the eGovERA© validator.
  • Integration with the European Library of Architecture Principles (ELAP) EIRA© Library of Interoperability Specifications (ELIS).

The EIRA© target users

  • European Institutions Policymakers.
  • Portfolio Managers.
  • Business Analysts.
  • Solution/Information/Infrastructure Architects.
  • CIOs of Member States.

Find out more

Check out these further notions about the EIRA© to know more!