Innovative and Connected Public Administrations

Innovative and Connected Public Administrations

TOPIC ID: DIGITAL-2024-BESTUSE-06-INNOV-ADMIN

Type of grant: Call for proposals

General information

Programme: Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL)

Call: Accelerating the Best Use of technologies (DIGITAL-2024-BESTUSE-06)

Type of action: DIGITAL-CSA DIGITAL Coordination and Support Actions

Type of MGA: DIGITAL Action Grant Budget-Based [DIGITAL-AG]

Status: Forthcoming

Deadline model: single-stage

Planned Opening Date: 29 February 2024

Deadline dates: 29 May 2024 17:00 (Brussels time)

Topic description

Outcomes and deliverables:

• A sustainable multi-stakeholder collaboration scheme, including a solid set of committed stakeholders and a framework for engaging new stakeholders in future, in full alignment with the governance structure set by the Interoperable Europe Act;
• A strategic roadmap for the envisaged actions and support measures needed for the achievement of Interoperable Europe objectives, based on a set of consultations, workshops, and meetings to gather requirements, best practices, and feedback from stakeholders;
• A detailed implementation plan on how this strategic roadmap could be implemented (including timeline, investment and capacity needs, milestones and KPIs).

The Digital Decade target expects all key public services to be online by 2030. These should also be available to citizens and businesses from other Member States, without discrimination. The future Interoperable Europe Act will be a significant driver for this, supporting Member States’ efforts in the field on cross-border interoperability and data exchange. This action will help create capacity in Member States to successfully implement the Interoperable Europe Act and prepare the ground for related support measures.

The Interoperable Europe Act foresees the possibility of setting up policy implementation support projects, which may rely on existing Interoperable Europe solutions, but may also identify missing interoperability solutions to be developed.

Innovation measures can support the development and uptake of innovative interoperability solutions in the EU, through the involvement of GovTech actors or the establishment of an interoperability regulatory sandbox. These efforts may also be assisted by training, experience sharing, peer reviews as well as the use of an interoperability regulatory sandbox.

Strengthened collaboration between Member States is necessary to launch common projects supporting cross-border interoperability. This CSA aims to create the preconditions for Member States to work together, jointly identify the needs and develop a platform for awareness raising, ideation and piloting interoperability assets needed for cross-border digital public services. These may result in re-usable, interoperability solutions that may be presented to the Interoperable Europe Board and eventually become labelled Interoperable Europe solutions. The CSA will thus be essential to prepare an effective awareness-raising plan for the next phase of cross-border digital public service development and testing.

The aim of this action is to create the conditions for developing a platform for awareness raising, ideation and piloting interoperability assets needed for cross-border digital public services. To this end, this CSA is expected to raise awareness and thereby bring together digital government ecosystems, experts and relevant stakeholders to identify requirements, solutions, innovation measures and joint pilots needed for the implementation of new cross-border services. This will need to be aligned with the measures and tools foreseen in the Interoperable Europe Act, including measures such as the regulatory sandboxes and Govtech. It will also foster training and peer reviews, when needs arise. It will also serve as a testbed for newly identified, re-usable interoperability solutions in the future. It should create a virtual environment where European public administrations can collaborate, share data, access cutting-edge tools and resources and facilitate the exchange of knowledge and data across borders for greater cross-border availability of digital public services. Proposers should also develop a broad communication strategy towards stakeholders. It should ensure coordination between the future Interoperable Europe Board and Community as well as other relevant stakeholders.

The CSA should not cover any elements that would lead to an overlap with actions on the European Digital Identity and Trust Ecosystem.

To this end, the action is expected to include:

• Convening public administrators and other relevant stakeholders in the EU to shape a collaboration platform for implementing the Interoperable Europe Act, including an appropriate governance structure;
• Mapping existing interoperability solutions that may help with the implementation of policy requirements and identifying any missing interoperability solutions to be developed;
• Identification of concrete actions and a roadmap needed for the achievement of Interoperable Europe objectives;
• Identification of synergies with relevant Union and national programmes policies and initiatives, including eIDAS, the Single Digital Gateway Regulation, data spaces and data-related legislation, the AI Act, ComPAct, Living-in.eu as well as relevant EDICS;
• Liaising with the Interoperable Europe Board and the Interoperable Europe Community to seek collaboration and ensure optimum level of interconnections and synergies.

All these activities will contribute to the capacity building of Member States’ public administrations to implement the obligations of the future Interoperable Europe Act on the ground.

Conditions

1.Admissibility conditions: described in section 5 of the call document

Proposal page limits and layout:described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

2. Eligible countries:described in section 6 of of the call document

3. Other eligibility conditions:described in section 6 of the call document

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion:described insection 7 of the call document

5.Evaluation and award:

• Award criteria, scoring and thresholds:described in section 9 of the call document

• Submission and evaluation processes:describedsection 8 of the call document and theOnline Manual

• Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement:described in section 4 of the call document

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants:describedin section 10 of the call document

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