The European Commission (EC) is planning to spend €3.34 million until 2016 to continue the services provided by its projects - such as OSOR.EU and Semic.EU - on open source and on electronic data exchange.
The EC published the budget details for its eGovernment project on 8 July 2010. Apart from the €3.34 million planned for the new platform to provide collaborative services for current Semic.EU and OSOR.EU users, an additional €8.8 million is foreseen to provide support for existing and future communities dealing with eGovernment in general. This includes the growing Open Source community on OSOR.EU and the community covering interoperability assets on Semic.EU.
The continuing support of these communities are part of the 'Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations' (ISA) work programme, which aims to increase electronic cooperation among public administrations within the Member States. The ISA work programme, developed by the EC and the European Union Member States, was adopted on 30 June 2010. The EC has reserved approximately €160 million for ISA for the next five and a half years.
The ISA work programme will run until the end of 2015, ensuring the services currently offered by OSOR. ISA, for instance, will continue to collect open source solutions and continue to work with international, national and regional open source software repositories.
Sharing best practices and raising awareness on open source and interoperability will accompany the three key ISA projects. ISA main activities are intended to create a trusted information exchange (including the development of an electronic identity and electronic signature), to develop an interoperability architecture, and to assess the IT implications of new EU legislation.