The Directorate-General for Informatics (DG DIGIT) of the European Commission has published its annual State-Of-Play Report on Digital Public Administration and Interoperability, a key publication within the National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO).

The 2023 edition shows that European countries have adopted a wide range of initiatives to facilitate their journey towards a more digitised public sector.

Main Findings

Significant advancements have been made in the field of cross-border interoperability, the formulation of digital-ready policies, and the adaptation of solutions at both national and international levels. Yet, several shared hurdles persist, including heightening the understanding of the significance of interoperability, as well as the urgency to foster cross-team collaboration and to address technical interoperability issues.

Concerning the innovative use of technologies by public administrations, approaches to AI and GovTech are quite diverse and heterogeneous. This often depends on the digital maturity of European countries, especially for GovTech which is still at early stage of adoption.

When it comes to data sharing, public administrations have developed innovative ways to share data, mostly through the creation of new advanced data infrastructures, such as data platforms and data spaces. Despite these initiatives, the main challenge remains to actually share and use data. This is due to multiple factors, such as the lack of interoperability, stakeholders’ fear to provide or open up data, the lack of efficiency in data collections, the absence of a data governance framework and different data qualities.  

The report showcases digital initiatives around the topics of:
– Interoperability and interoperable digital public services,
– Innovative use of technologies by the public sector, and

– Data sharing in Europe.

Those initiatives were implemented by 31 European countries. The report identifies frameworks of reference, noteworthy best practices, and potential areas of improvement for European countries.

If you want to learn more, check out the full report or visit the NIFO page on Joinup!