(14 August 2013) – Following the successful collaboration between EU Member States, industry, national administrations, academia, the private sector and local communities on a series of projects to make living, working, travelling, studying and doing business across borders easier, the European Commission is making a €13.7 million investment to further develop cross-border digital public services.
The new “e-SENS” project (Electronic Simple European Networked Services) will help develop digital public services which make it easier for companies to do business in their own Member State and elsewhere in the EU -including setting up a company, fulfilling legal requirements and taking part in public tenders. It will also link up national digital services for citizens who visit a different Member State on holiday, or for work or study.
Since 2008, large-scale pilots (LSPs) for cross-border digital public services were developed by the European Commission in cooperation with EU Member States, industry, national administrations, academia, the private sector and local communities to develop and test seamless cross-border digital services. As part of e-SENS, over 100 partners from 20 countries from Portugal to Turkey are developing and implementing building blocks based on open standards and specifications in interoperable eIDs, eSignature, eDelivery and eDocuments which innovators from the public and private sector can use to create new digital public services.
The Commission is providing €13.7 million to support e-SENS over three years (50% of the €27.4 million budget), from its Information and Communication Technology Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP). e-SENS will also look at how to ensure the long-term sustainability of the e-SENS building blocks and other cross border digital public services, based on the results of a recently published study. As of 2014, EU support could come from the Digital Service Infrastructures part of the Connecting Europe Facility which has allocated up to one billion euros over seven years to support platforms providing seamless digital public services in Europe.