Towards the Inclusion of Co-creation in the European Interoperability Framework

Interoperability is key to overcome complex issues such as climate change, health, and urban mobility. However, interoperability implementation faces various challenges, including integration of services and data at the local level, historical legacies, changing technology, interest of stakeholders to work towards common approaches, and privacy and security issues. Understanding the complexity and challenges of interoperability, the European Commission developed the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) to provide guidance to public administrations and it has been playing a key role to support interoperability implementation. Since then, novel tools and frameworks have been developed to enhance its impact. Acknowledging the EIF importance and building on relevant scientific literature, we propose the inclusion of the co-creation processes within the EIF to address the abovementioned challenges faced in the implementation of interoperability. Yet, we consider that further research is required to explore how and under which conditions co-creation could be included in the EIF.