The course for cross-border services is set
"People and businesses should be able to transact within a borderless Digital Single Market that is the value of Internet." Neelie Kroes
e-SENS, a new large-scale project that embodies the idea of European Digital Market development through innovative ICT solutions in public administration, has been formally launched. With the signing of the project Grant Agreement in August 2013, the project was officially started. The project activities have already been ongoing since 1st April 2013.
Nearly 100 partners representing 20 European countries, including Norway and Turkey make up the e-SENS project. Furthermore ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and OpenPEPPOL significantly contribute to the project. Such broad involvement bears witness to a deep interest and strong need to develop seamless electronic services across Europe. The Single Market is expected to become reality for citizens and businesses, and much can be done with the use of ICT. e-SENS will take significant steps towards “moving services forward” by bringing them to a digital level. Nevertheless, numerous obstacles must still be faced and overcome - including legal, semantic, organisational and technical barriers.
The aim of the e-SENS project is to develop efficient, high quality public services based on a European standard infrastructure. It will consolidate, improve and extend the efforts of large-scale pilots that have already been launched - e-CODEX, epSOS, SPOCS, STORK, PEPPOL - by facilitating access to health care, judicial systems, public procurement and business set-up in Europe. Generic and re-usable solutions will provide opportunities for developing public services in numerous areas of eGovernment.
The project solution will allow adopting a new approach in public service provision – more user-oriented, innovative and efficient in order to ensure savings in terms of money and time, both for citizens and for government itself. e-SENS is not primary about developing new solutions. e-SENS is about economy of scale, reusability and working together, new governance model through cross domain coordination at national and EU level. e-SENS will help moving from a domain silo approach to establishing common and shared cross sectors and cross borders digital infrastructures. By realising the potential of ICT, which can ensure interoperability across different national systems, European public administrations can achieve significant success in providing innovative public services at the international level.
