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1. Terms of Reference

1.1. Vision and mission

The Focus Group is to determine the role that standards should play in eGovernment, in particular as an important means of achieving interoperability at all levels of public administration throughout the European Union, including at national, regional and local levels. The Group will identify what measures are required to achieve this goal and contribute to the debate on how to ensure a permanent framework concerning standards in relation to eGovernment at a pan-European level, in a way that is as harmonised as possible with ICT standards of general application.

The Focus Group is established to prepare proposals and/or recommendations to CEN and other standardization bodies, the European Commission and its agencies, national administrations and industry and other market players concerning standardization issues in the field of eGovernment.

1.2. Background

eGovernment is defined by the European Commission as "the use of ICT in public administrations combined with organisational change and new skills, in order to improve public services and democratic processes, and strengthen support to public policies". eGovernment is an enabler to realise a better and more efficient administration. The use of standards has been recognised as an important pre-requisite of the success of eGovernment. The use of standards is particularly important in areas such as interoperability, one-stop government, joined-up government, accessibility/usability for and by citizens, etc. As a result, most national administrations in Europe now have some authority in place, seeking to establish, maintain and, sometimes, enforce the use of ICTs in eGovernment.

However, some initiatives are backed by a legal framework, this is relatively rare. Furthermore, authorities are noticeably absent at the trans-national and pan-European levels, with one or two exceptions such as the European Commission's IDABC programme, despite the growing demand for the supply of trans-national eServices. IDABC deliverables to date will provide a valuable input and starting point for the Group's work.

Not all the issues are purely standards-related of course, there are legal or administrative matters, for example. It is not the task of the Focus Group to seek to address these as such, although it should identify such issues where they constitute barriers to effective standards adoption.

At national and even regional or local levels, there is no shortage of eGovernment initiatives or projects that either aim at determining 'standards' or encourage their use. In addition, a wide range of specifications, recommendations and guidelines are proposed by interested parties through formal standards organizations (for example, UN/CEFACT) or consortia, (for example W3C and OASIS). It should be a general rule that, as far as possible, standards used in eGovernment be the same as those used in the private sector. This will minimise problems for those entities that have dealings with both, even if there will inevitably be additional eGovernment requirements.

However, the wide range of existing initiatives at national, regional or even local level may result in a lack of knowledge of other administrations' work., and lack of understanding and knowledge of the standards actually available or envisaged. This may lead to duplication of effort, and missed opportunities to improve economies of scale. As the use of standards is sometimes implicit, it is unclear what is available or used at present.

At the pan-European level, the main problem areas are:

• Lack of persistence: Much work is project-focussed. Once complete, there is little follow-up: incentives to use or re-use a particular "deliverable" are lacking, as its visibility may die with the project's completion;
• Lack of governance: no single body has either de facto or de jure authority for providing persistence, continuity or connection between projects and initiatives;
• Lack of maintenance: there is no single or federated infrastructure in place to act as a repository for work that is available for use or re-use by other administrations
• Lack of visibility/awareness: there is a lack of understanding generally in administrations, a lack of easy access to information concerning eGovernment standards, which contributes to the fragmentation of effort;

The European Commission's former IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations), now IDABC programme (Interoperable Delivery of pan-European E-Government Services to Public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens) has sought a more coherent approach, but does not embrace the full range of activities, since it concentrates on cross-border services. Numbers of public authorities at European and national levels have indicated that they require, and would indeed welcome, help in standardization efforts, some of which are fragmentary. Standardization in any case needs to help by providing coherent advice, and a platform for discussion of these issues and resolution of conflicting approaches.

CEN, standards consortia or other bodies, can build and maintain standards, specifications, rules and guidelines, according to well tried and tested internal processes, but they on the other hand do not have a general mandate to act without support from public authorities.

Furthermore, too little guidance exists at present for administrations to choose among the wide range of standards and specifications, or evaluate the relative authority, validity or sustainability of a particular choice, based on any hierarchy of norms. It should be noted that in the ICT domain, there are many proprietary standards, and often competing solutions, with resulting problems for inter-operability.

1.3. Scope

The first challenge of the Focus Group will be to consider the role of standards in:

• the digital provision of services by single and multiple government or public sector agencies, at national, regional and local level, including cross-jurisdiction/cross border issues;
• the 'government' of eGovernment, including how the digital provision of services is managed, quality criteria, conformance testing/certification, best practice, etc. and according to what standards and decided by whom;

Particular attention will be paid to the need to interface the standards issues with the policy requirements emerging from public administrations. The role of a group within the standards environment is to take these requirements and assess what the standards implications are. This role will be given added value particularly given the absence, at an EU level, of any overall authority corresponding to national administrations' CIO or eGovernment policy units.

The Focus Group will need to identify the extent of:

• issues and themes;
• agencies and authorities;
• standardized solutions,
• mechanisms for creation, delivery and maintenance of standards,

that currently exist, or that are desirable but absent, in the field of eGovernment in Europe.

1.4. Objectives

The objectives of the Focus Group will be to:

• identify and map out the initiatives and services that exist within the detailed scope defined by the Focus Group, including:
  • frameworks; o naming and design rules; o good/best Practices;
  • registries, repositories; and clearing houses o existing standards and specifications, that are used, or proposed for use, by public administrations;
  • mechanisms available for managing such standards and specifications (governance, processes and infrastructure);
  • project-based deliverables that could provide added-value to the work of another administration;
• involve public administrations' institutions and programmes, including the European Commission's IDABC programme, and EU-funded projects under the IST and other programmes, using the methodology of the standards bodies' COPRAS project,
• analyse in particular the standardisation requirements resulting from IDABC's guidelines and studies on the future architecture and infrastructures for pan-European services (Infrastructure Study, European Interoperability Framework/EIF, Architecture Guidelines, Content Interoperability Strategy etc), in collaboration with the IDABC network of Member States' experts;
• identify recurring or frequently encountered policy issues, with a view to providing common solutions, with particular regard to the gap between stated goals and actual delivery of solutions;
• identify any obstacles to a coherent approach to eGovernment standardisation at the trans-national level, in terms of authority, governance and infrastructure;
• contribute - from the perspective of the standards community - towards IDABC proposals with regard to a European-level "body", including:
  • advise on the provision of an information and services/solutions "directory";
  • outline a funding and governance model appropriate for a long-term, persistent service;
  • propose related and accompanying measures (such as conformance testing and compliance, certification, promotion and take-up, etc.).
• Such a future body should act as a "clearing house" - mapping expressed needs to existing resources and initiatives - and providing supplementary operational services when none exist and cannot be provided by existing agencies. This body must be sufficiently visible to achieve the "critical mass" required to make it useful and used;
• To ensure as wide a dissemination of the results as possible, in order to improve awareness within the EU and beyond of these issues, including with standards organizations globally and Governments outside Europe.

1.5. Membership

Membership of eGov shall be open to any interested party with the necessary interests and commitment.

Representatives of key stakeholders in eGovernment will be specifically invited to join. eGov should aim to be inclusive, representative and be able to attract a critical mass of eGovernment stakeholders in order to garner buy-in to its activities from a broad spectrum of interests. eGov will aim to create an impact by attracting the participation and commitment of important relevant actors.

Provided that the Grant request that has been submitted to DG ENTR (in the context of DG ENTR's support to standardization activities in support of eEurope) gets accepted, membership of the eGov Focus Group will be free of charge.

1.6. Working methods

The CEN/ISSS eGov Focus Group shall be formally responsible to the CEN/ISSS Forum, which shall endorse the Terms of Reference and any future amendments to them, and the final Report.

The Chair will be nominated by the Group and endorsed by the Forum.

Until such time that it is clear that the Grant request will be accepted/will not be accepted, the Focus Group secretariat will be provided by a CEN/ISSS Staff member. The Secretariat will co-ordinate the administrative duties involved in the organization of the FG including :

• Maintaining the meeting schedules and arranging the physical meeting locations
• Distribution of agenda and materials for the Plenary Sessions
• Recording Minutes of the Plenary Sessions
• Maintenance of Web Site for posting work material

The Secretariat shall maintain web pages with appropriate links, an e-mail exploder and an FTP site. Where possible, meeting participation by audio, or web conferences should be enabled.

The Focus Group will also nominate a representative to act as single point of contact to IDABC and its expert groups.

The eGov Focus Group may manage resources in the form of Project Teams, appointed under CEN rules to prepare and edit documents.