Scenario and Roadmap Development in SCOOP4C

Introduction

This section reflects the outcomes reported in Deliverbale 4.2. The deliverable documents the findings of tasks 4.3 and 4.4 that were carried out in work package 4. Task 4.3 aimed at developing a roadmap of future areas of actions to guide policy makers as well as implementers and funding bodies of the once-only principle. The main objective of this roadmap was to spread the maximum potential of the OOP4C vision. The roadmap was developed based on the results gathered in tasks 4.1 and 4.2 of the work package 4, which are documented in the gap analysis report (see deliverable D 4.1). Identified gaps in the previous deliverable were classified in various types such as political commitment, technical interoperability, and trust and transparency. The eleven most pressing among the identified gaps in the different domains were evaluated as the areas of actions. For each area, a number of actions and measures were suggested to overcome the existing gaps and to enhance the OOP implementation in the cross-border cooperation between citizens and public sector. The recommended actions were extracted from productive collaborations between the project partners, the SCOOP4C community, and a broad group of relevant stakeholders. A number of stakeholder workshops have been conducted to deliberate with the participants the entries in the roadmap as well as policy recommendations for effective OOP implementation in cross-border settings in the five domains selected in D 4.1. 

Methodology 

The work in Deliverable 4.2 was accomplished based on the identified gaps in D 4.1 and through intense interaction with the stakeholder community. An interactive methodology was applied to develop a comprehensive set of actions and measures with the aim to enhance the cross-border implementation of the OOP. The roadmapping methodologies used in previous EC projects, such as the eGovRTD2020 (Codagnone C. , 2007) (Ma & Wimmer, 2007), CROSSROAD (Lampathaki, et al., 2010) and eGovPoliNet (Wimmer & Majstorovic, 2015) as well as the methodology applied in A Digital Georgia project (Krabina, et al., 2013) were combined and customised according to the particular needs and requirements of the SCOOP4C project. This roadmapping methodology as customised for SCOOP4C is described in section 2.1. Subsequently, the interactive techniques that were applied to facilitate a fruitful contribution of relevant stakeholders are outlined in section 2.2. 
One of the main objectives of this method is to facilitate fruitful participation of a variety of stakeholders during the development of the roadmap. The methodologies applied in the roadmapping exercise are described in chapter 0. Moreover, responsible actors were defined for each suggested action. The specified actors are expected to support the successful implementation of the OOP by accomplishing the recommended actions. Furthermore, the suggested actions in each area were grouped by topical areas. The roadmap was verified by the steering board member of the SCOOP4C project on the 25th September 2018 in Vienna, Austria after the final stakeholder session in the scope of the second conference of the project, which was successfully accomplished on the 24th September, as well, in Vienna. Task 4.4 aimed to develop policy recommendations for policy makers in both, national and EU levels, targeting also OOP implementers, funding bodies, and other relevant actors with the aim of including the once-only principle in high-level policies and in modernisation of the public administration. The policy recommendations were finally designed in form of a policy brief toward policy makers and other relevant stakeholders to convert the services of the public sector into once-only and digital by default solutions (see deliverable D 4.3 of WP4). 

Additional information on methodology is described in Deliverable 4.2 (Section 2) available here.

Domains

For the identification of the OOP application domains the scenario development technique described throughout Deliverable 4.1 (Chapter 3),  was adjusted to the specific context of the project and the desired future cross-border OOP scenarios. The policy domains for the scenarios were chosen basing on the “information areas related to citizens“ suggested in Article 2(2)(a) of the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR). The SDGR proposes a European gateway to inform and assist citizens with services within the EU. From the areas, the following five were selected for the scenario development: 

  • Education domain: education or traineeship in another Member State, leading to the scenario 'education', which outlines the process of a student applying for a study in another Member State in order to take a semester abroad
     
  • Social protection domain: cross-border family rights, obligations and rules leading to the cross-border scenario called 'social protection', which addresses parental responsibilities in relation to registering the new-born citizen
     
  • Taxation domain: work and retirement within the Union leading to the cross-border scenario called 'taxation', which is related to a citizen temporarily working in another Member State while still handling his tax declaration in the home country
     
  • Moving domain: vehicles in the Union, in particular taking a motor vehicle temporarily or permanently to another Member State – leading to the scenario 'moving'
     
  • Heath domain: healthcare related to buying prescribed pharmaceutical products in a Member State other than the one where the prescription was issued, on-line or in person, leading to the scenario 'health'

As initial step in the scenario development, each partner selected a scenario domain and subsequently identified the main actors (e.g. citizens, public administrations and businesses – informed in part also by the stakeholder analysis carried out in work package 2, cf. Deliverable 2.1) as well as the main interactions and supporting building blocks, challenges, needs, and enablers of the scenario.

Analysis of gaps

According to the definition of gaps and the gap analysis methodology introduced in D.4.1, different kinds of gaps were extracted from the future cross-border OOP scenarios. In this section, the identified gaps are synthesised and analysed. For the synthesis, the identified gaps from the future scenarios in education, social protection, taxation, moving, and health domains were extracted and summarised to create an overview. The same procedure was applied on the benefits for stakeholders in each domain. The gaps were structured and categorised along the different types of enablers introduced in deliverables D 1.1 and D 1.2. The benefits are organised by the domains and the stakeholder classifications from work package 2. All gaps, benefits, and impacts were identified and prioritised interactively with the SCOOP4C community, through intensive discussions with different groups of stakeholders in five workshops in different Member States. Moreover, the SCOOP4C community verified the final set of gaps.

The results can be investigated here.

The set of gaps presented is the final result, after several interactive workshops and iterative revisions. As they were verified by the community as well as by the steering board, they represent the areas that hinder the OOP the most. Therefore, the actions have to address them in a similar manner. Consequently, the partners used the types of the gaps as the future areas of the actions that are needed to reach full potential of the OOP implementations.  The eleven future areas of actions on research and innovation toward a highly mature once-only principle implementation are the following:

  • Political commitment area
  • Legal interoperability area
  • Organizational interoperability area
  • Semantic interoperability area
  • Technical interoperability area
  • Interoperability governance area
  • Motivations area
  • Citizen-centred area
  • Trust and transparency area
  • Data protection area
  • Data quality area

 

Actions and measures in relevant areas

The roadmap actions recommended by the SCOOP4C community and the project partners were identified in cooperation with a wide range of stakeholders from different sections. The roadmap actions shall help to overcome barriers and gaps in the areas of actions. All areas were structured in a similar approach as the gaps. The individual recommended actions are displayed in a tabular form. Besides a unique identifier, a short name and description of the action, the table shows the connection to the scenario domains and single gaps. Additionally, expected results formulate the tangible improvements through overcoming the corresponding gaps in each area. Nevertheless, a number of actions were recommended to generally enhance the cross-border implementation of the OOP rather than addressing a specific identified gap. Finally, appropriate stakeholders are assigned to each action, to display the responsibilities within each area. The table was initiated by the project partners and iteratively complemented with the inputs from the community. As there were basic and complex interconnections between the actions, the partners grouped the final set of actions to show the relations between them. At the end, the potential impacts of the implementation of the suggested actions were anticipated and documented for each area of actions in the table. Likewise, responsible actors for implementing the actions have been identified. 

The results can be investigated here.

Policy Recommendations

The results of tasks 4.1 - 4.3 finally fed into an activity to develop policy recommendations addressing policy makers at different levels, funding bodies and other relevant actors towards a necessary paradigm shift in the public sector and of citizens to implement the SCOOP4C. The policy recommendations are also formulated as policy brief and aim at motivating and advancing the transformation of the public sector towards once-only and digital by default solutions. The method for identifying and consolidating the policy recommendations were the same as for the roadmapping, i.e. discussions among project partners as well as with stakeholders and a validation workshop with the Steering board members.

The policy recommendations can be investigated here. 

Conclusion

Deliverable 4.2 documents the work performed under tasks 4.3 and 4.4 of work package 4 of the SCOOP4C project. The aming objective was to identify areas of action and to formulate a roadmap of such areas. The project team has engaged roadmapping methodology to develop, based on the gap analysis in D 4.1, a set of roadmap actions and to cluster them into eleven areas of action.
Along this work, the project conducted a total of eight workshops where stakeholders contributed with their view on roadmap actions and with policy recommendations. Furthermore, the roadmap actions and the policy recommendations were exposed to a validation with the steering board.  
For the validation of policy recommendations, a questionnaire was set up, which brought some further, though limited, insight into what are the most recommended directions of how to address the OOP implementation successfully, and by whom.
To sum up the major results reported in this deliverable:  

  • Identification of eleven areas of action, which are: motivation for OOP, political, legal, organisational, semantic, technical, interoperability governance, citizen-centred design, data quality, data protection, and trust and transparency.
  • For each area, definition of a set of action which should help overcome the gaps. The actions are described along with expected impacts and responsible actors.
  • Definition of policy recommendations, which are also raised along ten roadmap areas and which are formulated to target EU level and national policy and law makers.