Commission targets cross-border administrative burden

The EU Commission has published a Communication calling for seamless interoperability of e-government services on national, regional and local levels throughout the EU.

People and businesses doing activities involving administration in two or more EU countries – setting up a business, getting married, registering a child’s birth or the death of a relative – often face burdensome administrative barriers. Due to a lack of interoperability, e-government services that all member states should have set up by the end of 2004 to facilitate this kind of activity do not function across borders. If they did function they would be useful in bridging geographical distances and processing the times of administrative requests. 

In the Communication published on 23 February 2006, the Commission identified a number of different elements which should be harmonised to make different countries’ e-government services work smoothly together. On an organisational level, administrations should come to a common understanding as to how key events like births, marriages and deaths, as well as standardised business procedures like setting up business or taking part in a tender, should be dealt with. As a next step, they need to introduce a standardised vocabulary that will allow easy translation on a system level of key information provided. Finally, the systems themselves need to have standardised interfaces that will allow the easy exchange of information.

Making all of this happen is a long and complicated process, which the Commission hopes to be able to co-ordinate between member states. It is being dealt with in the the IDABC work programme 2005-2009, adopted on 8 November 2005, and will be a central element of the upcoming e-government action plan. 

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