1. What is eGovERA?
2. Who is eGovERA for?
3. eGovERA Ontology
4. Which are the eGovERA Use Cases and Benefits?
5. eGovERA Solution Components
6. Latest eGovERA©  solution component releases

What is eGovERA?

eGovERA© is a solution for eGovernment portfolio management decision and digital transformation support in European Public administrations. eGovERA© supports the next generation (for 2030) of European digital public services enabling business continuity, transformation, and co-existence with the current state of affairs.

The DG DIGIT/ISA unit was requested by the DG REFORM to help with the definition of a roadmap to help Member States implementing effectively e-Government digital public services. Some Member States would indeed benefit from a clear plan to achieve a higher level of maturity in e-Government implementation, with the support of the European Commission and lesson learnt from other Member States. This work has been included in the context of the EIRA action, since a set of reference architecture, covering different policy areas, could be the basis for creating the desired to-be state. The European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA) is an architecture content metamodel defining the most salient architectural building blocks (ABBs) needed to build interoperable e-Government systems. The EIRA© provides a common terminology that can be used by people working for public administrations in various architecture and system development tasks.

Who is eGovERA for?

• The CIO of a Member State (e.g. Head of MS’s Digital Agency), who needs to plan and optimize the investment in e-Government for the following years, to be distributed in different policy areas, while focusing on the modernization of the MS’s digital public services.
• The public administrations’ services Portfolio Manager, working on planning the long-term modernization programmes of specific digital public services for citizens and businesses or of infrastructure services, who needs to have guidance in identifying the priority actions and their sequence.
• The enterprise or solution architect working in the implementation of digital public services in a specific policy domain or in cross-domain infrastructure services, who needs to have a European reference model to plan the implementation phases.

eGovERA Ontology

The Ontology describes the overall conceptual model behind the definition of a roadmap for the effective implementation of e-Government Digital Public Services. According to the eGovERA© scope, each policy domain (e.g. Health, Tax, Business Agnostic) digitalisation strictly depends on the maturity of the needed digital business capabilities within an organisation. digital business capabilities are the key skills and capabilities a Company or a Government requires to transform itself into a sustainable and successful business by considering Digital Public Services as the enabling component. Each digital business capabilities it is guided by dedicated principles, which summarize the overall objective that the Organization aims to achieve.

Each business capabilities it is guided by dedicated principles, which summarize the overall objective that the Organization aims to achieve.

An Digital Public Services is a digital service provisioned by or on behalf of a public administration in fulfilment of a public policy goals servicing to users either citizens, businesses or other public administrations. One or more can realize one digital business capabilities. Each survey users need to identify a MS's priority for each digital business capabilities is supported by dedicated Digital Public Services which are in turn composed of specific Architectural Building Blocks. An Architectural Building Blocks is a constituent component of the overall architecture that describes a single aspect of a specific Digital Public Service.

As a result, this is a relational model on which each element it is interconnected and the relationships that compose those elements (Policy domain, survey users need to identify a MS's priority for each digital business capabilities, Digital Public Service and ABBs) provide the overall data model.

The eGovERA© Ontology describes the knowledge representation of eGovERA©. The eGovERA© ontology components are:

• [Domain] Policy domain: scope to which the Digital Public Services apply (e.g. Health, Tax, Business Agnostic)
• [SubDomain] Policy subdomain: a specific area of the policy domain that well classify the Digital Business capabilities and related Digital Public Services
• [DigitalBusinessCapability] Digital business capability: the Digital Capabilities are the key skills and capabilities of an organizational body (i.e. public administration) requires to deliver [public] value sustainably and efficiently using digital technologies as the enabling component.
• [Principle] Architecture principle: it defines the underlying general rules and guidelines for the use and deployment of all IT resources and assets across the enterprise. They reflect a level of consensus among the various elements of the enterprise and form the basis for making future IT decisions.
• [Category] Architecture principle category: a Architecture principle category defines a specific group of Architecture Principles.
• [BCxP] the Architecture Principles applicable to each Digital Business Capability
• [DigitalPublicService] Digital public service: a digital public service is an interoperable service digitally provisioned by or on behalf of a public administration in fulfilment of public policy goals servicing to users either citizens, businesses or other public administrations. A European public service comprises any public service exposed to a cross-border dimension and supplied by public administrations, either to one another or to businesses and citizens in the Union. One or more Digital Public Service can realize one Digital Business Capability.
• [DPSxBC] Digital Public Services (DPS) needed to realise each Digital Business Capability (BC)
• [ArchitectureBuildingBlock] Architecture Building Block: an Architecture Building Block (ABB) is a constituent of the architecture model that describes a single aspect of the overall model. An Architecture Building Block describes generic characteristics and functionalities. Architecture Building Blocks are used to describe reference architectures, solution architecture templates or solution architectures of a specific solutions.
• [ABBxDPS] the Architecture Building Blocks (ABB) to be implemented for a specific Digital Public Service (DPS)

Which are the eGovERA Use Cases and Benefits?

Primary use cases:

• Digital Public Services Portfolio Management Decision Support: The Digital Business Capabilities Assessment and the eGovERA© eGovernment transformation Roadmap can be used to prioritise the digital business capabilities to be developed/improved considering the specifics of the state-of-affairs in the MS.

• Applying for EU Funds Support  in eGovernment and digital transformation: The eGovERA© eGovernment Digital Business Capabilities Assessment and the eGovERA© digital transformation roadmap help identifying the set of building blocks required by a digital business capabilities and the digital transformation roadmap in which they should be tackle, thus providing a strategic orientation for EU funds requests.

• National Digital Agenda Support: eGovERA© eGovernment Portfolio Management Decision Support and the eGovERA© digital transformation roadmap will provide guidance to identify the objectives and the priorities on the digital transformation journey.

Secondary use cases:

• eGovernment H-L Architecture Design Support: The GovERA Reference Architectures can be used as a model to guide the development of digital public services (one or multiple in a specific policy area), starting from the needed organizational elements to be put in place, to base registries and systems to be developed or modernized.

• ICT EU Legislation Impact Assessment Support: The eGovERA©  provides a set of reference architectures, per different policy area, where relevant legislation at EU level is taken into account. Using eGovERA©  can help public administrations’ officials understand the impact of such legislation when developing digital public services.

eGovERA Solution Components

The eGovERA© main solution components are the following:

1) eGovERA© reference architectures ( Tax, Customs, Health, Business Agnostic, Green,..)

• Business Agnostic RA : Enterprise architecture metamodel supporting the description, analysis and visualization of eGovERA Business Agnostic reference architecture within and across the Business Agnostic policy domain, reflecting the EIRA architecture content metamodel and the contents coming from the eGovERA Business Agnostic reference architecture (i.e. Excel file).
• Health RA : Enterprise architecture metamodel supporting the description, analysis and visualization of eGovERA Health reference architecture within and across the Health policy domain, reflecting the EIRA architecture content metamodel
  and the contents coming from the eGovERA Health reference architecture (i.e. Excel file).
• Tax Reference Architecture : Enterprise architecture metamodel supporting the description, analysis and visualization of eGovERA Tax reference architecture within and across the Tax policy domain, reflecting the EIRA architecture content metamodel.
• Customs RA : Enterprise architecture metamodel supporting the description, analysis and visualization of eGovERA Customs reference architecture within and across the Customs policy domain, reflecting the EIRA architecture content metamodel and the contents coming fromthe eGovERA Customs reference architecture (i.e. Excel file)

2) eGovERA eGovernment Business Capabilities Assessment :

This component represents a user friendly and guided survey that help Member States in the prioritization of the digital business capabilities for the selected policy domains. The survey is composed by different sections, the first section let the user describe each digital business capabilities by the following parameters:

• National Digital Strategic Fit: it reports the strategic priority assigned to the Digital Business Capabilities, according to the  national digital agenda
• Ability to support the dBusCap: it reports the ability to support the Digital Business Capability/ies
• Target Perspective Ability to Support dBusCap: it reports the target prospective ability to support the Digital Business Capability/ies
• Expected Public Value: it reports the expected beneficial impact (cost discounted) provided by the target prospective ability to support
• Estimated budget (in millions of EUR): it reports the amount of Euros (Million of Euros) to be allocated for the Digital Business Capabilities implementation

3) eGovERA©  eGovernment Portfolio Management Decision Support

This component supports the Member States in the visualisation of the survey results, providing useful features to prioritise the selected digital business capabilities adjusting the National Digital Strategic Fit Expected Public Value and "Ability to support the dBusCap" values for the different policy domains.

4) eGovERA© digital transformation roadmap

This component supports the Member States in the visualization of the survey results, providing useful features to prioritize the selected digital business capabilities adjusting the National Digital Strategic Fit Expected Public Value and "Ability to support the dBusCap" values for the different policy domains.

Latest eGovERA© solution component releases

The following are the latest eGovERA Foundations solution component releases:

• eGovERA Business Agnostic Reference Architecture
• eGovERA Health Reference Architecture
• eGovERA Tax Reference Architecture
• eGovERA Customs Reference Architecture

The following are the latest eGovERA Upscale solution component releases:

• eGovERA web portal
• IDPSIO (The IDPSIO supports eGovERA© eGovernment Digital Transformation Roadmap Decision Support solution)

We kindly invite you to provide us with you feedback on this new assessment tool. Please reach us through the following email: DIGIT-EIRA@ec.europa.eu.