Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe

= Introduction - What is SEMIC.EU =

The Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe (SEMIC.EU) is an eGovernment service initiated by the European Commission and managed by the eGovernment Services (IDABC) Unit.

It is based on the idea of exchange of solutions to the challenge of semantic interoperability, with a clear focus on eGovernment in Europe. As an interactive service its guiding principles are sharing and collaboration. The public portal www.semic.eu was launched in June 2008. It follows a clear open source policy as it is represented by the European Commission's Open Source portal www.osor.eu.

Objectives

SEMIC.EU operates as a network comprised of eGovernment projects and communities and is completely open for participation by all stakeholders in the field of public services and eGovernment. It fosters the collaboration of EU Member States's initiatives in the field and complements them as a pan-European service: Semantic solutions provided by stakeholders are harmonised and pooled. The projects involved provide and reuse solutions for seamless data interchange which preserves the original meaning of the data. This collaborative approach is chosen to avoid redundancies in optimising data exchange between different systems and across national and language boundaries.

As a 'horizontal measure' of the IDABC programme, SEMIC.EU is established as a permanent implementation of the principles stipulated in the 'European Interoperability Framework' (EIF).

It is also an implementation-oriented preparatory measure of standardisation measures. Built upon its function as a facilitator of European harmonisation, SEMIC.EU participates in international standardisation organisations. In addition, it is among the service's primary goals to provide scientific as well as practical information in all matters related to semantic interoperability.

Platform, repository and service

The website www.semic.eu is built around a repository of real-life solutions dubbed 'interoperability assets' which are provided by projects and organisations in the sector.Within SEMIC.EU, the models, taxonomies, XML schemas and other solutions to enhance meaningful data exchange, are subject to a standardised and supervised clearing process. This involves peer review and incremental enhancement of the assets. However, they remain available at any stage during the process making it possible to reuse them in different projects, contexts or domains at any time. For discussions around the provided assets and to debate more general questions around issues of (semantic) interoperability, an open forum is an integral part of the portal. It is supervised by trained staff and serves as a source of input for project and platform improvement.

Communities and face-to-face exchange

The Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe is not limited to the portal but reaches out to diverse projects aiming at the creation of living communities, be it in specific domains like environment or justice or as circles around more general challenges for semantically accurate data exchange, e.g. regarding personal status, addresses or names and their components.

External links

* [http://www.semic.eu/ SEMIC.EU]
* [http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/home/ IDABC homepage]
* [http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=31508/ European Interoperability Framework (EIF)]
* [http://www.osor.eu/ Open Source portal]