Guides to digital government
Public services that work together, explained.
Plain-English guides to interoperability, linked data and digital public services: how government systems share meaning, data and identity, and what it really takes to make them join up.
Three ways in
Start with the principles, go deeper into the data, or look at the services people actually use. Every guide cites its sources.
Interoperability
How public bodies agree on laws, processes, meaning and technology so their systems can work together.
- Semantic interoperability
- The European Interoperability Framework
- The once-only principle
- The Interoperable Europe Act
Linked data
Vocabularies, ontologies and catalogues: the semantic web technologies that give public data a shared meaning.
- Ontologies and vocabularies
- Linked open government data
- DCAT-AP and data catalogues
- Semantic web services
Digital public services
Identity, registries, life-event services and AI: what joined-up services look like to the people who use them.
- Digital identity and eIDAS
- Base registries and data exchange
- Life-event services
- AI in public administration
Latest articles
Why “address” is the hardest word in government data
An address field can hold four different ideas. Why that breaks matching, and the three fixes that work.
Read the articleMoving to another EU country: what the once-only system changes
What the EU's evidence exchange lets someone moving country skip, step by step, and where paper still wins.
Read the articleFive questions to ask before you build a new public register
Whether a new register becomes a trusted source or another stale copy is decided by five early questions.
Read the articleFour ideas that come up in every guide
Most arguments about joined-up government turn on a handful of terms. These are the ones worth getting straight first.
- Interoperability
- The ability of organisations and their systems to work together, exchanging information and using it, across legal, organisational, semantic and technical boundaries.
- Semantic interoperability
- Making sure data keeps its precise meaning as it moves between systems, so that a term such as “address” or “household” means the same thing at both ends.
- Base registry
- An authoritative record kept by a public body about basic things such as people, businesses, buildings or vehicles, which other services can reuse rather than collect again.
- Once-only principle
- People and businesses give a piece of information to public administrations once; after that, administrations reuse it, with the right legal basis and safeguards.
How the guides work
Every guide ends in practice
Standards and frameworks only matter if they change what happens at the counter and on the screen. So each guide closes with what the approach fixes, what tends to get in the way inside real organisations, and a sensible place to start.
Here is the one from the guide to the once-only principle.
In practice: the once-only principle
What it fixes
- People moving to another EU country no longer have to carry certificates between offices.
- Authorities get evidence straight from the issuing body, which cuts manual checks of documents.
- Users see what will be shared and decide whether it goes ahead.
- Once an authority is connected, the same set-up serves many procedures.
What gets in the way
- Much evidence is still not issued in a form that can be exchanged automatically.
- Identity matching fails when two countries record the same person differently.
- National rules on what counts as proof differ, so evidence has to be mapped across borders.
- Connecting each competent authority takes time, budget and testing.
Where to start: List the evidence your service asks applicants from other EU countries to supply, and check which procedures are in scope of the Single Digital Gateway Regulation. Your country's national coordinator for the gateway, the contact point for administrations on all gateway matters, is the place to ask how authorities connect. Read the guide.