The Committee on Industry, Research and Energy adopted the report drawn up by Dragoş Florin DAVID (EPP-ED, RO) amending, under the first reading of the codecision procedure, the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on interoperability solutions for European public administrations (ISA).
The main amendments are as follows:
Subject matter and objective: according to MEPs, cooperation and interoperability between sectors should also be understood to mean cooperation between public and private sectors and NGOs. Therefore, the objective of the ISA programme is to support the cooperation between European public administrations by facilitating the efficient and effective electronic cross-border and cross-sector interaction between such administrations and bodies performing public functions, while promoting and improving interoperability between key public infrastructures.
Moreover, the ISA Programme shall be extended to include local and regional authorities.
General principles: MEPs consider that the principles listed in the Commission proposal are basic principles which shall be applied during the implementation of the ISA programme under any circumstances. They suggest adding the principles of openness and re-use to the general principles.
Project charter and execution report: reference to measures facilitating multilingual communications should be always referred to in the project charter.
Solutions: studies shall be published and forwarded to the responsible committees of the European Parliament and to the Commission as a basis for any future legislative initiatives necessary to ensure the interoperability of the computer systems used by public administrations.
Implementation rules: the studies and projects shall be open for accession at any stage, and Member States not involved in these studies and projects shall be encouraged to join at a later stage. To ensure interoperability between national and Community systems, the common services and generic tools relating to existing European public standards for the exchange of information and integration of services shall be specified.
Committee: the Commission shall be assisted by a committee called the committee on Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations ("the ISA Committee"). MEPs believe it should be made clear that the role of such a comitology committee is to assist the Commission with the implementation of the current programme.
Monitoring and evaluation of the programme: the European Parliament has to be given the possibility to have an exchange of views on the outcome of the evaluation.
Interaction with stakeholders: a new article provides that the Commission shall bring together relevant stakeholders for the purposes of exchanging views among themselves and with the Commission on sectors and issues addressed by the ISA programme. To this end the Commission shall organise conferences, workshops and other meetings; it shall make use of electronic interactive platforms; and it may use any other means for interaction which it considers appropriate.
International cooperation: MEPs propose extending international cooperation to the Eastern Partnership and to the countries of the Black Sea region. The ISA programme shall also promote re-use of its deliverables by third countries.
Financial provisions: 50% of the ISA programme budget shall be dedicated to the interoperability of local authority computer systems.