Current Issues

European Commission extends interoperability activities with new ISA programme

]init[‘s SEMIC.EU service under a new umbrella

]init[‘s services for the European Commission’s Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe, SEMIC.EU, continue with the transition from the old EU programme “IDABC”, which terminated at the end of 2009 to its successor, the “ISA” programme (“Interoperable Services for European Public Administrations”).

As a core feature of SEMIC.EU, a repository set up and operated by ]init[ currently holds a corpus of over 400 data models, taxonomies, code lists and other semantic interoperability assets.

Among the latest additions are a number of Norwegian, Spanish and Italian code lists, the latter from the INTERPRANA catalogue.

Other examples available from the repository are:

• The NACE classification of economic activities as well as different national implementations
• SDMX (Eurostat's Statistical Data Exchange Formats)
• eOrdering and eInvoicing (by IDABC)
• eTendering and eAwarding (by IDABC)
• HR-XML, e.g. Competency types, Assessment catalogue, Enrollment, Military history
• Several “mature” data models for natural persons (from different countries)
• MoReq2 (generic requirements catalogue)
• The data model for the European Arrest Warrant
• The European financial reporting taxonomies COREP and FINREP
• The subjects classification from the PLOTEUS portal

Several new collaborations are currently emerging between the pan-European service managed by ]init[ and Member States initiatives, among them Spain, the Netherlands, and Estonia.

Research cooperation and European relations

The development, analysis and assessment of interoperability tools and assets have also attracted interest from academic institutions in Europe as well as Asia and North America. SEMIC.EU plans to maintain and extend these collaborations in order to identify and provide the best semantic interoperability solutions available in eGovernment contexts. Support by the academic community is sought in order to create suitable pan-European if not universal solutions.

Another measure serving this cause is the linking of Related Repositories to the European centre.

]init[ has developed, launched, managed and maintained the portal as well as related offline services since 2007.