The Semantic Interoperability Community Europe ( SEMIC.EU ) was an eGovernment service initiated by the European Commission and managed by the Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens ( IDABC ) Unit. As one of the 'horizontal measures' of the IDABC, it was established as a permanent implementation of the principles stipulated in the 'European Interoperability Framework' (EIF). It offered a service for the exchange of semantic interoperability solutions, with a focus on demands of eGovernment in Europe. Through the establishment of a single sharing and collaboration point, the European Union wanted to resolve the problems of semantic interoperability amongst the EU member states. The main idea behind the service was to make visible specifications that already exist, so as to increase their reuse. In this way, governmental agencies and developers benefit as they do not reinvent the wheel, they reduce development costs, and increase the interoperability of their systems.
23-453: In December 2011, the content and the activities of SEMIC.eu were migrated to a new collaborative platform: Joinup . The reason for the migration to Joinup was to provide public administrations in Europe with better communication and collaboration tools to share experience with interoperability solutions for public administrations, to increase the number of users and to leverage synergies between
46-657: A document management system, Open e-Prior, a tool to help manage electronic procurement, and OnLine Collection Software for ECI, to help organisations gather signatures that support their request to the European Commission to propose legislation. In December 2014, the ISA Programme added the ePractice community to the Joinup platform. ePractice offers services for the professional community of eGovernment, eInclusion and eHealth practitioners. In January 2015,
69-532: A facilitator of European harmonisation, the centre participated in international standardisation organisations. Another objective highlighted by the European Commission is the provision of scientific as well as practical information on all matters related to semantic interoperability. The website www.semic.eu was built around a repository of real-life solutions labelled as 'interoperability assets' ( XML schemas , code lists, ontologies , taxonomies , classification schemes, etc.) provided by projects and organisations in
92-770: A forum thread. Joinup collaboration platform Joinup is a collaboration platform created by the European Commission . It is funded by the European Union via its Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations Programme (ISA Programme). Joinup was launched on 9 December 2011. It replaced the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu) and the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe (SEMIC.eu), themselves communities funded by
115-608: A load balancer, some network-attached storage and a reverse-proxy. The main part of the platform is on three Red Hat Linux hosts, running Apache webserver and Drupal. A fourth Linux host is running the Apache Tomcat Java server, the Apache Solr search engine and Apache Maven build automation tools. A fifth Linux host is running the Apache Subversion software versioning and revisioning system. There
138-469: A proposal from the European Commission (EC). ETSI is the officially recognized body with a responsibility for the standardization of information and communication technologies (ICT). It is one of the three bodies officially recognized by the European Union as a European Standards Organisation (ESO), the others being CEN and CENELEC . The role of the ESOs is to support EU regulation and policies through
161-640: Is a similar collaboration platform, begun by Vietnam 's Ministry of Science and Technology in January 2013. Joinup is itself a federation of other, similar projects, such as the French Adullact. This was started in 2002 by the Association des développeurs et utilisateurs de logiciels libres pour les administrations et les collectivités territoriales, (Association of developers and users of free software for governments and local authorities). Adullact
184-603: Is a sixth Linux host running the MySQL relational database system and a seventh for GNU Mailman . The platform's software is used to offer similar services involving public administrations in other regions and countries. In Australia and New Zealand , the Openray platform is being piloted since June 2012 by the Open Technology Foundation (OTF), a research organisation supporting the government sector in
207-582: Is designed to develop, disseminate, and support information exchange standards and processes that will enable jurisdictions to automate information sharing, the EC's Joinup is for sharing information technology. Joinup might even be compared to the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN). However, this focuses not on software packages or semantic assets, but on the storage and distribution of data, such as spreadsheets and
230-521: Is diverse and includes all the key stakeholders of the ICT sector: private companies, research entities, academia, government and public bodies as well as societal stakeholders. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Micro-Enterprises (MEs) represent more than a quarter of ETSI's total membership. The list of current members can be found on the ETSI website. Membership contributions are calculated depending on
253-523: The Drupal content management framework (version 6) and can be downloaded from the Joinup web site. Its latest version is 1.7.2 (released on March 15, 2015). The source code of some past versions can be found at JoinUp's website. The development of the platform is done on hosts running Debian Linux. The Joinup platform runs on 10 hosts in the EC's datacentre in Luxembourg . It includes
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#1732773031709276-697: The European public sector , but the projects are open to all others. The platform has three main functions: Joinup provides access to a Federation catalogue hosted by public administrations in EU member states and standardisation bodies such as the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Joinup is also used by the European Commission's Directorate General for Informatics to make available all of its applications. Examples include Circabc,
299-497: The ISA Programme. These two became Joinup's initial communities. The site aims to let public administrations promote their e-government systems. More specifically, it offers a meeting place and a collaborative working environment for the development of interoperability . Joinup hosts communities of practice , such as the community for the Common Assessment Method for Standards and Specifications (CAMSS) and
322-489: The OSOR.eu and SEMIC.eu user communities, while optimising the use of public funding. The IDABC programme listed the efficient implementation of pan-European eGovernment services as an important purpose of SEMIC.eu. According to the website, the initial idea behind SEMIC.eu was “to make use of the knowledge already generated in other projects to the benefit of others”. As a network of eGovernment projects and communities, SEMIC.eu
345-470: The OpenGovernment community was added by the EC's Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology A detailed list of all the potential services someone receives by registering at this platform can be found at JoinUp's website. A list of all the software contributions made by the community are at JoinUp's website. The Joinup platform is powered by a tailored version of
368-652: The community for the National Interoperability Frameworks Observatory (NIFO). The platform also raises awareness on free and open source software and semantic interoperability in the public sector . Joinup offers a catalogue of open source software, interoperability assets and models such as the Interoperability Maturity Model (IMM). The target audience includes those using, developing and implementing e-government systems. The site focuses on
391-548: The contents of databases. ETSI The European Telecommunications Standards Institute ( ETSI ) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization operating in the field of information and communications . ETSI supports the development and testing of global technical standards for ICT-enabled systems, applications and services. ETSI was set up in 1988 by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations ( CEPT ) following
414-548: The different ETSI technical groups (Technical Committee (TC), ETSI Project (EP), ETSI Partnership Project (EPP), Industry Specification Group (ISG), and Special Committee (SC). ETSI's Cloud Group aims to consider standardisation within cloud computing and conformity with interoperability standards in this field. In October 2023, ETSI reported a data breach. Hackers stole a database containing information on ETSI’s online users. ETSI has more than 900 member organizations worldwide from 65 countries and five continents. Its community
437-544: The production of harmonised European Standards (ENs) and other deliverables. The standards developed by ESOs are the only ones that can be recognized as ENs. ETSI develops standards in key global technologies such as: GSM , TETRA , 3G , 4G , 5G , DECT . ETSI’s standardization activities are organized around sectors: Home & Office, Better Living with ICT, Content Delivery, Networks, Wireless Systems , Transportation, Connecting Things, Interoperability, Public Safety and Security. Technical activities are carried out in
460-462: The research, evaluation, trialling and uptake of open technologies, standards and methods. By 21 November 2013, all semantic services were federated and show up in the Openray repository. Also on 21 November 2013, the government of South Australia announced that it would start piloting an internal version of the Joinup platform software and test the use of the EC's Open e-Prior. Its aim is to improve collaboration and procurement activities. Openroad
483-553: The sector. For instance, various French ministries and the Danish Telecom agency provided developed solutions. The assets were subject to a standardised and supervised clearing process to ensure conformity with high quality standards. This involved peer review and incremental enhancement of the assets. However, they remained available at all stages of the process, making it possible to reuse them in different projects, contexts or domains at any time. Moreover, each asset contained
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#1732773031709506-645: Was actually an inspiration for the EC's Open Source Observatory and Repository. Other examples would be the Spanish Centro de Transferencia de Tecnología (Centre for Technology Transfer), or La forja de Guadalinex, hosted by Junta de Andalucia . The platform could also be compared with the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), an XML -based information exchange framework from the United States . However, NIEM
529-427: Was open for participation to all stakeholders in the field of public services and eGovernment. The projects involved provided and re-used solutions for seamless data interchange, preserving the original meaning of the data. Data exchange methods were provided by stakeholders, harmonised and pooled. SEMIC.eu was also described as an implementation-oriented preparation for standardisation measures. Built upon its function as
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