An Interview on Interoperability Standards and Digital Agenda 2020

It was a great pleasure to have a film-making team from the oncoming Danish EU presidency, in the Greek Interoperability Centre premises at NTUA, to record a small interview on interoperability and standardisation issues of the EU Digital Agenda.

The interview revolved around ICT standardisation in the Public Sector and respectice challenges for the ICT industry, especially SME's, touching upon:

- The need for timely evolution and adoption of ICT standards by the public sector

- The innovative nature of ICT SME's and how they can be of use to a legacy-based public sector

- The evolving standardisation at EU and National levels.

The final edited video clip will be available in a couple of months.

With Rasmus (director) and Ralf (cameraman) at the GIC premises

New Book on Organisation Interoperability from Springer

I had the pleasure to read the newly published Springer book on "Organisational Interoperability in e-Government", by esteemed colleagues Herbert Kubicek, Ralf Cimander and Hans Jochen Scholl.

This authored book contains draws many important practices from the MODINIS study on eGovernment Interoperability, giving a plethora of ideas and methods pm how to tackle organisational and operational issues in the public sector, with the use of interoperable systems and services.  The book is a well written, coprehensive approach to classify critical shortcomings and respective succesful solution paths, delivering real value to the reader.  Excellent for public policy makers, e-government consultants and innovative researchers, this is also a worthy companion in the university class, especially at post-graduate lessons on information systems.

Not least, the book provides a carefully made selection of the core references in this domain  - I was happy to see our work on National Interoperability Frameworks and Interoperability Science Base, among cited methods and guidelines of almost 20 well known e-Government scientists.

A must read for the period.

Find more on the book here.

Greek Tax Offices productivity visualisation

Tax offices productivity in Greece during summer 2011: Aegean Islands productivity rises during summer

Continuing the visualisation of Greek Tax Offices productivity a new map is provided below, depicting the number of cases handled during the summer period. Each spot indicates the percentage of cases processed  by the tax office of the specific location in the interval between June and September of 2011, in relation with the total pending ones in the beginning of summer.

Three different colors displayed on the map represent the three levels of completion:

• Red (153 Tax Offices): minimum productivity (less than 20% of open cases were processed within summer). 
• Yellow (111 Tax Offices) : medium productivity (between 20% and 40%) 
• Green (23 Tax Offices): higher productivity (more than 40% of all open cases)

The visualisation shows that certain touristic destinations (e.g. Aegean Islands or Crete) tend to be more productive during summer period.  See the before summer status here.

The global average for the efficiency of Tax Offices in the summer period is 22% in terms of completion of cases. What is remarkable is that there are still tax offices that have not resolved a single case since the beginning of the year. The last update of data taken into consideration was published by the Ministry of Finance / General Secretary of Information Systems (http://www.gsis.gr/doyaudit/) on September 30, 2011.

The EU Digital Agenda discussion on Interoperability, Cloud and eID

My colleague David Osimo asked me, an assistant professor of eGovernance Systems in Aegean University, in Samos, to moderate an on-line discussion on Digital Agenda 2020 issues around Interoperability, Cloud and eID. This on-line group of experts and citizens will produce a  report on findings and actions proposed, including on-line contributions.

When I accepted the task, the first suggestion was to list a few sources of relevant background material and gather some existing on-line discussion forums.

So here we are:

Area I : Online material

• The basic definitions of Digital Agenda 2020 (on Pillar II: Interoperability and Standards): http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/pillar.cfm?pillar_id=44&pillar=Interoperability%20and%20Standards
• The DA2020 workshop report (on interoperability, eID, Cloud): http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/cf/daa11/workshop-results.cfm
• The EC/DIGIT ISA Web Site (on EU interoperability policy): http://ec.europa.eu/isa/

Area 2: On-line forums and communities

• CROSSROAD  Group on eGovernance (200+ members): http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2594136
• FINES Group on Future Internet and Enterprise Interoperability (100+ members): http://www.linkedin.com/groups?viewMembers=&gid=3375465
• Enterprise Interoperability Group (150+ members): http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Enterprise-Interoperability-123301
• The SEMIC.EU group on Semantic Interoperablity Assets: http://www.semic.eu/idabcJForum/forums/list.page
• The ePractice.EU Group on eProcurement/eInvoicing (400+ members): 
• The ePractice.EU Group on eID (150+ mbrs): http://www.epractice.eu/en/community/eureid 
• The ePractice.EU Group on Governance and Policy Modelling (150+ mbrs): http://www.epractice.eu/en/community/egovernance

 Also, check some more interoperability and cloud related sites: http://bit.ly/oE1S65 

Area 3: On-line discussion initiation
By looking at the main topics of the online discussion, we could depict Interoperablity (as a framework) and

e-Invoicing (as a specific interoperability and organisational challenge for enterprises). A classification of topics would yield:

Interoperability 

- standards

- frameworks

- national status

- approaches for eBus and eGov

- Break-through approaches

e - invoicing
- status, barriers,technical implementations
- feedback form practice
- Break-through ideas

Then, on a more national level at local events in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, the discussion will evolve around cloud, eID and internet of things, to be integrated at a later stage:

• e - Identity (frameworks, technical implementations, barriers, best practices)
• Cloud Computing (typology, status for public, private and hybrid, PaaS-SaaS orientation, cloud interoperability)
• Internet of things (standards, status of adoption, outlook)

It is easy to join the discussions at: http://linkd.in/n1rdIP 

Greek - Ukrainian delegation meeting on FP7 Research

A meeting of a Greek and Ukrainan delegation on research and development projects and initiatives was held on  9th September 2011, at NTUA premises in Athens.  Several Ukrainian State University and the Ukrainian Academy of Science were represented in this high-level meeting.

Projects presented in detail include:

- The PADGETS FP7 project on social-media based policy making

- The ENGAGE eInfrastructures project on Open Data

- The Greek National Interoperability Framework and the initiatives of the Greek Interoperability Centre

The two delegations agreed to proceed in strengthening the scientific collaboration between Greece and Ukraine in the areas of ICT, electronic Government and Interoperability.

View of the Greek - Ukrainian delegations meeting