Towards a digitally transformed European Commission
In her Political Guidelines for the Next European Commission 2019–2024, as President-elect, Ursula von der Leyen identified ‘A Europe fit for the digital age’ as one of her top three priorities. She then mandated Commissioner Johannes Hahn, reporting directly to President von der Leyen, to drive the modernisation and full digitalisation of the Commission. What are the ambitions of the new European Commission in this area and how does it want to achieve them? As Director-General, heading the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Informatics since early 2016, Gertrud Ingestad stands at the heart of EU discussions and developments in this policy area. Below she defines some of the key goals for her DG and what a digital transformation means for the Commission itself, the implementation of its policies and the promotion of Digitalisation of Public Administrations throughout the Union.
By Gertrud Ingestad, Director-General for Informatics (DG DIGIT), European Commission
Using technology as a means…to serve people
No question: the scale and the scope of the digital transformation that we are witnessing is unprecedented. Technological changes are pervasive, persistent and extremely rapid:
- the rise of data and artificial intelligence;
- the increasing ubiquity of mobile devices;
- the growing reach of social and collaborative networking;
- the power of cloud and increase in computational performance.
But evident as it is, this focus on technology is not the whole story. Because technological advances such as data processing, analysis and connectivity give us the means, as never before: to reach out to the individual, to address the needs of the citizen and of communities, to serve people where they are, especially the weakest, to listen to the opinions of civil society, and to respond to questions and concerns and to explain.
Digital has the potential to transform public administrations, help them deliver their services in a stable, reliable and secure manner, to focus on user needs as never before. An unprecedented quality leap for the public sector, in its fundamental raison d’être of ‘serving the citizens. We see evolving:
- a cost-effective public administration that will help complete the single market, by allowing businesses to operate securely across borders and by giving individuals trusted access to services. This will help making the four freedoms — free movement of goods, capital, services, and labour — a reality internally and reinforce the European Union’s position in the global competitiveness landscape;
- a responsive public administration, which is close to citizens through user-centric services. This will strengthen trust and cohesion and will close the gap between citizens and institutions;
- accountability and transparency in policymaking, which will enable a dialogue between institutions and stakeholders based on evidence, fairness and trust. This will help to fight disinformation and contribute to inclusive political discussion and decision-making.
These changes will have a profound impact on the content of, and ways of conceiving and delivering, public policy, on the ways of interacting with stakeholders (citizens, businesses, administrations), and on the ways public administrations operate. Together, they will change the role of public administration, as we know it. And data is at the core of this process: the way public administrations collect, process, share, analyse, visualise, render public and make data accessible; the way this is done legally, securely, interoperably and with a full audit trail.
To rise to these challenges, the European Commission is pursuing a parallel strategy. One objective is to radically transform the Commission itself. The Commission has adopted a digital strategy that sets the goals and roadmap to become a digitally transformed, user-centric, and secure data-driven public administration. The second objective is to help public administrations across Europe, at all levels, in their digital transformation and to support them in connecting their services securely across borders.
A data-driven European Commission
President Ursula von der Leyen set out in her Political Guidelines for the Next European Commission 2019–2024 that it should ‘drive the full digitalisation of the Commission, putting in place new digital methods and digital diplomacy tools.’ The digital transformation of the Commission is a unique opportunity to exploit the potential of digitalisation to create innovative solutions for a more trustworthy, effective, efficient, transparent and secure EU public service. The European Commission Digital Strategy and the Synergies and Efficiencies Initiative have set a roadmap to build a digital eco-system by 2022 with the following features: secure by design, privacy by design, interoperable by design, digital by default, cross-border by default and open by default.
Digital transformation is about rethinking the organisation, the way of conducting business, working in a high-tech, digital ecosystem. Policy departments must accelerate the adoption of a digital-first reflex and culture, while IT must become more agile and faster to be able to align technology speed and policy outcomes. We need a collective and distributed digital delivery model inspired by a collective working ethos, where policy and IT departments work together. This is also an opportunity to reinforce co-creation and synergies with other European institutions and agencies. An opportunity I see very positively evolving with the European Court of Auditors .
The digital transition requires balancing disruptive change and running policies without interruption. We advance in a series of iterations, focusing on continuous improvement to ensure there is sufficient digital transformation momentum. The planning process relies on strong corporate governance at Commission level to prioritise activities and allocate limited resources.
In practice, the Commission’s digital transformation means:
- evidence-based policymaking: create a data-ecosystem to integrate Commission data with external data (e.g. Member States data) and create a stack of digital services to support the discovery, management and dissemination of data. This means making extensive use of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, modern business intelligence and advanced analytics — e.g. powered solutions for predictive analytics, modelling, impact assessment at the stage of policy design, implementation and assessment. Examples are: assessing policy sustainability, comparing different scenarios, monitoring and evaluating the performance of European policies;
- digital maturity and skills: upskill the entire Commission workforce, including staff designing digital solutions and staff using technology, ensuring that all staff have the digital skills they need;
- a secure Commission: ensure top-level cybersecurity by developing automated threat detection systems to protect the Commission’s information assets, based on advanced data analytics to assess the potential risk behaviour associated with cyber-attacks;
- a lean Commission: transform fundamentally the business and policy processes (through simplification and streamlining) rather than just replicating current activities electronically. Digitise these processes using a solid foundation of reusable platforms and blueprints. Provide staff with a modern and effective digital workplace. Improve staff engagement and productivity through new modern working methods and tools. And provide a strong digital infrastructure based on a hybrid cloud architecture.
Connect European public administrations delivering seamless public services
As the EU is moving towards a data driven economy, public administrations need to use and share data in a secure, efficient and trustworthy way. This is a key enabler for introducing artificial intelligence tools and better cross-domain and cross-border data availability. It is also a pre-condition for creating value for citizens and businesses across Europe and for the further development of the Digital Single Market.
Indeed, in a functioning internal market, public services need to be able to ‘follow’ their users’ needs across administrative entities, policy sectors and borders. This means articulating processes with digital solutions in the public administrations at all relevant levels in the Member States, be it national, regional or local.
The actions of the European Commission, and specifically DG DIGIT, aim mainly (i) to ease and accelerate the digital transformation of the public sector across the Union, (ii) to implement European policies through the deployment and use of digital technologies, and (iii) to find synergies in the EU funds used for the implementation of the e-Government principles across the Union.
The 2017 Ministerial Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment, by which all EU Members States and EFTA countries committed to building user-centric digital public services, explicitly underlines the importance of adopting the main e-Government principles, such as ‘interoperability by design’ and ‘openness.’
The same challenges exist in different flavours in every setting, across the EU and at various levels of public administration. In the Commission and in Member States a lot of work is being put into solving them. However, most efforts so far are not coordinated, which leads to duplication, fragmentation, higher costs, lower quality solutions and sometimes new barriers to data sharing. At the core, the challenge is the same. This is why common standards and shared solutions can solve many similar issues and reduce problems of delays, cost overruns and incompatible digital solutions.
Even though overall eGovernment and interoperability performance is moving in the right direction, the transformation and digitalisation of public administrations requires additional efforts, in particular regarding ‘digital capacity’ building, and the provision of reusable and interoperable digital tools for the efficient implementation of EU policies and legislation, and improvement of administrative and judicial cooperation.
The European Commission aims to work closely with Member States in order to modernise public administrations in the Union, use technology to bring government closer to citizens and businesses, and to simplify public administrations’ modus operandi. Cross-border interoperability, user-centric public services, streamlined administrative processes and open data are the four key areas where further action is needed.
(1) Ensure cross-border interoperability between businesses, citizens and public authorities
As referred to in the European Interoperability Framework (EIF)1, cross-border interoperability connects directly with the use of open common specifications and standards. Interoperability is seen as a priority in sectors such as transport, border control and security, justice and health. According to stakeholder consultations, harmonisation of digital infrastructures and standards is a crucial driver of digitisation to build cross-border digital services. Therefore, the upcoming Digital Europe Programme (DEP) aims to continue to assess and promote existing common specifications and standards, create common specifications and standards if needed, and oversee the implementation of the EIF.
Firstly, a more holistic approach and a clear strategy plan are needed to evolve towards cross-border interoperable public services in the EU. Secondly, there is scope for improved communication with the programme stakeholders to ensure adoption and reuse of interoperability models and building-block solutions. Finally, more efforts need to be directed to ensuring interoperability across policy domains, as horizontal interoperability is missing in domain-specific implementations.
(2) Provide citizens and businesses with high quality and user-centric public service
Member States confirmed their commitment to implementing the eGovernment principles in the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment and the Commission is ready to support Member States in providing high quality, user-centric digital public services to both citizens and businesses.
(3) Streamline processes within public administration
As confirmed by stakeholder consultations, the public expects more from digital government than just putting public services online. Governments should harness ICT to improve the efficiency of processes and delivery of services in sectors such as Health, Justice or Transport. For example, in order to fully enforce EU competition law, it is essential to further intensify and deepen cooperation between the Commission and national competition authorities by adopting state-of-the-art, interoperable digital solutions allowing for the swift exchange of data.
(4) Common EU Government Interoperability mechanism
To this end, a future common EU Government Interoperability mechanism could build on the efforts of existing interoperability programmes such as ISA² — Interoperatiblity solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens — and CEF Digital — Connecting Europe Facility — and related Digital Single Market policy initiatives, in order to address digital skills gaps, promote the use of open data, strengthen cybersecurity, and harness new technologies (artificial intelligence, blockchain and big data) for European public administrations.
Figure 1 — A “co-everything” Digital Strategy for the European Commission
Digitally transforming European public services
The public sector, including the audit profession, traditionally operates with the concepts of Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness to guide and measure its action. Digital technologies give us unprecedented means to deliver on these quality requirements, ensure accountability and demonstrate the impact of public action. Ethics rightly has long joined these three ‘Es,’ as an expectation of the public about how public services and policies need to be designed and delivered: fair, unbiased and transparently. The welcome and necessary public European debate around ‘ethical AI’ is a good example, and highly relevant for a public sector expected to develop AI-powered services. To these four ‘Es,’ I would like to propose adding a fifth: Engagement. Reaching out to citizens and civil society, actively seeking their input, analysing data in a controllable fashion, visualising options for debate and informed decision-making is technically feasible today, as it never has been before.
Indeed, the digital transformation of the public sector is not just another technical iteration. It truly transforms how the public cause is organised, how decisions are prepared and taken and how policies are explained, implemented and enforced.
This article was first published on the 1/2020 issue of the ECA Journal. The contents of the interviews and the articles are the sole responsibility of the interviewees and authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Court of Auditors.
