The Commission will use the common building blocks such as CEF DSIs and follow the EIF. It will gradually introduce the 'digital by default' and 'once-only' principles, eInvoicing and eProcurement and assess the implication of a possible implementation of the 'no legacy' principle

Description of action

To pursue its own digital transformation and in order to comply with the legal obligations set out for EU public administrations, the European Commission will also undertake a number of concrete actions.

In order to improve its efficiency and effectiveness in implementing Information Systems and Business Process Management, the Commission will design, provide and support a corporate central registry of reusable services, components and building blocks (such as ECAS for authentication), necessary to build complete solutions. It will also ensure that its architecture is aligned with the ISA² efforts.

To increase the contribution that the building block DSIs make to the creation of a true Digital Single Market, the Commission and its services will make use of the CEF building block DSIs whenever the function they represent is needed in new IT systems supporting the implementation of EU legislation as well as internal procedures. Over time existing system will, whenever present functions represented by the building blocks DSIs need to be replaced, migrate to the CEF building block DSIs. Today, the sectorial CEF DSIs (such as eJustice, eHealth and eProcurement) are all providing their cross-border digital services based on the building blocks DSIs i.e. eID, eSignature, eDelivery, eTranslation and eInvoicing. These building blocks are not only reused in 70% of the sectorial CEF funded DSIs but also in 44% of the major corporate systems of the European Commission and in 9% of the other major EU policy enabling systems not funded by the CEF. Furthermore, the building blocks are spreading to other EU Institutions and creating a symbiotic relationship between private and public sector with industry providing building block solutions and services and public administrations and businesses use them for improved connectivity and additional digital security. As a result, the eDelivery building block accounts for over 7 million of exchanged documents per quarter in 18 countries and in different sectors, the eSignature Building Block accounts for more than a billion eSignatures across Europe per quarter and the eID building block is enabling the mutual recognition of national eIDs across 21 countries.

A detailed overview about the reuse of the building blocks can be found at the CEF Digital Reuse Dashboard.

With a view to improving the access to reusable public sector information across borders the Commission has set up an Open Data infrastructure, through its European Data Portal launched in 2015, currently referencing more than 1.000.000 datasets made available by European public administrations. The Commission is also publishing its own datasets, together with those of many other EU Bodies and Agencies, on the EU Open Data portal.

As public procurement plays an important role in promotion standards, Member States have created national catalogues of ICT-standards and technical specifications to guide procurers and accelerate standard adoption on national markets. The Commission is working on integrating these catalogues into European catalogues to avoid market fragmentation at EU level. The Commission will apply the European catalogues, of which the standards and technical specifications underlying the CEF building block DSIs are a subset, once completed and agreed.

The Commission will apply the "digital by default" principle both internally and when interacting with external stakeholders through grants or tenders using eIDAS services, eInvoicing and eProcurement. A "digital by default" policy vis-à-vis external stakeholders will be put in place, e.g. foreseeing that when any procedure or service is updated or created, it will be fully digital and rely on eID and trust services (i.e. eSignature, eSeal, time stamping, and eDelivery). The aim is that by the end of 2019, the procurement processes of the Commission should be fully electronic using common IT solutions[1].

Main responsible at the European Commission: DG DIGIT

Target date: 2016-2019

Status: Completed

More info (website):

[1]http://ec.europa.eu/atwork/synthesis/amp/doc/digit_mp_2016_en.pdf