Openforum Academy Report on "Achieving European Interoperability"

I have the honour of being a Fellow of the Openforum Academy. The Openforum Academy is an independent programme, you could call it a think tank, bringing together people from industry and academia in order to provide new input and insight into the key issues which impact the openness of the IT market.

A couple of week's ago I had the pleasure to share a roundtable debate which was part of the Openforum Academy's INSIGHTS programme. The basic idea behind this programme is to facilitate broad and open discussion on a key topic and derive a report on the topic based on the discussion held and contributions made.

This time the topic was "Achieving European Interoperability". More precisely, we discussed about the Commission Communication "Towards Interoperability for European Public Services" that was published shortly before Christmas with the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS) and the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) as annexes. And we worked out on what needs to come next in order to really achieve interoperability and make things real. Attendance in the roundtable event was outstanding. We had expert participants from the Commission, some Member States, as well as representatives from industry - both large and small, from academia and from overseas. Andy Updegrove had flown in to give the  introductory keynote.

The full report on the topic is now available for download from the Openforum Academy website. I am still astonished on the quality of the roundtable discussion and therefore on the actual "insights" this report provides. Above all, I was happy to get confirmation on the strong request for openness from all sides, be it the Commission or Member States. It is seen as a major pre-requisite for pan-European interoperability. But having chaired the discussion I am almost bound to like it. So best if you read yourselves....