Overview
For over 20 years, European digital policies have tracked the progress of Member States through monitoring activities involving indicators and, increasingly, capacity-building, benchmarking and maturity assessments. This report presents a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of the European Commission's (EC) monitoring 'landscape' of key digital policies related to interoperability and the digital transformation of government. It provides recommendations to streamline and modernise monitoring, drawing on evidence from key EC monitoring schemes and the EC staff responsible for them, alongside contributions from the Member States via their Chief Information Officers and members of the Interoperability of European Public Services Expert Group, amongst others.
This report summarises the work of analysing existing monitoring approaches and proposing a way ahead. It distils and further articulates the evidence base presented in the JRC report Landscaping the monitoring of interoperability and digital transformation , alongside recommendations for wider consultation.
Quick Guide
- Section 1 provides details of the key monitoring schemes addressed by the study, as well as its rationale, objectives, methodology, challenges and limitations.
- Section 2 reports on the key takeaways from the broader landscaping study.
- Section 3 presents the SWOT analysis
- Section 4 recommendations for a way ahead
- Section 5 conclusions
Key Messages
Given the policy context and technological changes, it is timely to assess if monitoring remains fit-for-purpose or if alternative approaches would create increased efficiency and new possibilities.
Monitoring efforts seem to rest at an early stage of digitalisation. There is a lack of integrated dashboards, and the underlying processes remain non-formalised and unaligned. Increased coordination and collaboration within the EC and between the EC and MS would improve the collective understanding of the digital landscape for the public sector across Europe. It could help assess where increased efficiencies would lie, moving from existing 'silos' to a more 'interoperable' approach.
Interoperability is recognised as a key enabler of digital transformation processes. It can facilitate the automation and sharing of processes within and across actors in the EC. Interoperability is also a concern of digital-ready policymaking, as defined under the current EC Digital Strategy. Most of interoperability’s underlying 5 principles, as set out by the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), are in play in this potential to modernise. Interoperability efforts across monitoring schemes can foster more agile and efficient monitoring asset exchanges, including their data, metadata and documentation.
Monitoring both the interoperability in public administrations and the digital transformation of government in the EU policy landscape covers numerous aspects, ranging from standards adoption to the protection of citizens’ rights online. However, reporting burdens and inefficiencies persist. Some MS ask for priority-setting and to explore alternative approaches to reduce such monitoring and reporting burdens.
This report highlights a series of elements to pay attention to, ranging from improving the timing of requests for information to assessing if indicators are relevant or need data to be submitted annually or over longer periods. It points to the challenge of dealing with issues such as MS moving at different speeds in their digitalisation while, at the same time, applauding the 'personal bests' of those still learning. It is important to reconsider monitoring beyond output measurement, shifting attention towards digital policy outcomes and impacts. Piloting alternative approaches should help understand whether minor adjustments or more fundamental changes are needed.
Furthermore, the evolving policy context introduces uncertainties; for instance, the proposed Interoperable Europe Act (still under negotiation) will require regulatory monitoring covering the implementation of a yet-tobe-revised EIF, interoperability solutions uptake and open-source development. Among the new measures, interoperability assessments are foreseen that could perhaps be used as a source of information in the Act monitoring exercise. Similarly, any reconfiguration of monitoring efforts for interoperability could provide streamlined evidence useful for Digital Decade-related monitoring or other policies.
Any change should be highly collaborative between stakeholders to increase the benefits of monitoring and the ownership of results. Thus, a ‘co-creation’ process is proposed as the most appropriate way to assess the evidence base and take action towards the upcoming policy needs, setting a more sustainable set of activities in place.
Keywords
Regulatory monitoring, Better Regulation, RACER, indicator, public sector, interoperability, digital transformation of government, digital government, Digital Decade, European digital policies, EIF, NIFO, DESI, eGovernment Benchmark, Berlin Declaration, Digital-ready policymaking.
How to cite this report
Hernandez Quiros, L., Smith, R.S. and Schade, S., Identifying opportunities for streamlining European monitoring of digital policies - Landscaping the monitoring of interoperability and digital transformation, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2023, doi:10.2760/163337, JRC133631.