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Hellenic OCR Team

HOCRT

The Hellenic Optical Character Recognition Team (HOCRT) represents the first scientific crowdsourcing initiative that aims exclusively at the processing and study of parliamentary textual data.

Lobbying Activity

Response to European Interoperability Framework (EIF) evaluation and EU governments interoperability strategy

21 Oct 2020

In view of the rapid development of tools and services built around (linked) open government data, the evaluation of the European interoperability framework (EIF) and of the much broader ISA2 programme is both timely and important. The Hellenic OCR Team, which is designing methods and building tools for the processing and analysis of public data, sees there a broad field for the democratization of public knowledge. The updated programme and framework also need to be consistent with complementary EU strategies, such as the European AI strategy. The Hellenic OCR Team would like to join the long list of stakeholders who think that interoperability is a key enabler for a Pan-European digital transformation. A holistic transformation of (digital) public services will directly influence the private ICT sector, with the potential to create an ecosystem of related apps and services. Currently, EIF contains a set of non-binding rules offering guidance to member state and EU agencies. While soft law can be sometimes effective, the present situation calls for measures that are more drastic. Stricter rules, maybe in the form of a consolidated EU Regulation, could be examined as a direct response to the aggressive expansion of private actors in the public and private sphere (as of policy option 1). Moreover, the expansion of the current toolkit with mature, reusable and open source interoperability solutions (as of policy option 3), would accelerate the development process of tools and services at the national and the Union level. A dedicated task force for immediate, middle term and long term technical assistance at all levels could be formed to support any interoperability action. Furthermore, the fostering and expansion of the Interoperability Academy would present a possibility worth investigating for the structured re-education of public and private actors in the interoperability dimension of ICT system development. Given the great significance of these policies, the time frame for the above legislative and administrative actions could be set extremely narrow.
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