SPOCS - Simple Procedures Online for Cross-border Services

Public administrations from all member states will face considerable changes due to the EU Services Directive, which is to be transferred into national law by December 2009. In this regard, Fraunhofer FOKUS sees an important point in technical, organizational and semantically interoperability. Therefore, the European Commission has launched the SPOCS project, which covers current issues concerning cross-border interoperability in the context of the European Services Directive. In the project, common specifications will be developed and realized by a large scale pilot. Core objective is linking different large scale pilots to establish a European eGovernment infrastructure.

The main points of SPOCS are:

• Content Syndication,
• eDocuments,
• eDelivery,
• eSafe and
• Interoperable eService Directories.

Further information about the projects can be found at the SPOCS website: http://eu-spocs.eu

Piloting

The piloting of the SPOCS building blocks started. The pilots show the interoperable and secure exchange of information and documents within the scope of business registration and setup abroad. More information are available at http://www.eu-spocs.eu/pilots . German pilot is hosted by Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (http://www.spocs-bremen.de/spocs_vs )

FOKUS will support the project particularly in the “Interoperable eService Directories” work package with its research results from the “directory based responsibility finder” (http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/go/vzf) project established by the high performance portals (http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/go/hpp) research group. Main focus is on establishing a network of directories concerning services, organisation and electronic services. Therefore the further development of the German electronic services directory (DVDV) is envisaged as well as the linkage to administration finder (Behördenfinder), public service catalogues (Leika) and citizen-/business-portals (BUS). Basement for the specifications are the development and piloting of open modules as well as the usage of industry and administration standards. Moreover FOKUS will initiate the usage of SPOCS results in other national and international projects.

The work package “Interoperable eService Directories” will investigate the usability of semantic technologies and rule-based systems based on work of the research field Governance Portals to simplify realization and achieving sustainability. This will support the activities regarding public / administrative infrastructures and the modernization of the administration.

Semantics and Policy Lifecycle

FOKUS shows in the context of semantics the support of an SPOCS adapted policy lifecycle through information systems. Therefore the three domains of Point of Single Contact enhancement, Open Data / community network and policy support are demonstrated. The domains support the strategic objectives of the digital agenda and research programs of the European Commission for increasing the competitiveness and innovation (CIP) as well as usage of information technology for policies (ICT PSP). The demonstrators will be set up beginning of 2012 and show the potential of meta data verification through inference of a specific ontology and policy discussion / recommendation through a community platform based on Open Data. For further information about governance and Open Data at FOKUS go to

Governance Technology (german)
Open Data (english)

Partners:

The project consists of 29 partners from 16 states. These are:

• CapGemini BV (The Netherlands)
• Federal Office of Administration (Germany)
• Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation (Netherlands)
• Hellenic Ministry of Interior / General Secretariat of Public Administration and E-government (Greece)
• Institute of Logistics and Warehousing (Poland)
• SPOCS.at, Austrian consortium of Graz University of Technology and Federal Chancellery (Austria)
• InfoCamere S.c.p.A. (Italy)
• InfoCert (Italy)
• ATOS (Germany)
• Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (Germany)
• Ministère du Budget, DGME (France)
• Fraunhofer Society for Promotion of Applied Research / Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, FOKUS (Germany)
• Government to You (Greece)
• Ministry of Economy (Lithuania)
• LU Tudor, Luxembourgish consortium lead by Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor (Luxembourg)
• Malta Enterprise (Malta)
• Malta Information Technology Agency (Malta)
• Brønnøysund Register Centre (Norway)
• Agency for the Public Services Reform (Portugal)
• INOV (Portugal)
• Turismo de Portugal (Portugal)
• Centre for Advanced Studies on Electronic Services, E-Caesar (Romania)
• Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, Tillväxtverket (Sweden)
• Ministry of Public Administration (Slovenia)
• Department for Business Innovation and Skills (United Kingdom)
• European Business Register
• Chamber of Commerce of Avellino (Italy)
• Intertrade Chamber of Commerce of Salerno (Italy)
• Uni.Systems (Greece)
• Enterprise Lithuania (Lithuania)
• UAB Mit-Soft (Lithuania)
• UAB Data Intelligence Systems (Lithuania)
• UAB JMSYS (Lithuania)
• ICI Bucharest (Romania)

Extension:

The European Commission has envisaged the extension of the SPOCS project with its working program 2010. The new partners are on board since the General Assembly from 9th and 10th November 2010 in Vienna. Further information can be found at the SPOCS website or the website of the ICT Policy Support Program (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/participating/calls/call_proposals_10/index_en.htm). The extended project will force the piloting and communication as well as dissemination activities. Moreover an improved support for a European eGovernment infrastructure in the context of the large scale pilots will be facilitated. The collaboration of large scale pilots as STORK, PEPPOL and EPSOS will be intensified and the networking with other European projects and organization enhanced.

Funding:

The SPOCS project will be supported by 50% through the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP: http://ec.europa.eu/cip/index_en.htm) in the context of the Information Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/index_en.htm). The grant number is CIP-ICT PSP-2008-2 n° 238935.

The other 50% funding is realized through equity capital of the specific partners.