The e-SENS Large Scale Pilot final event, taking place in Brussels this week, takes the participants on a journey from successful pilot experiences to real life situations. Cross-border Digital public services are now becoming possible in different areas such as e-Health with e-Prescriptions, e-Justice with on line small claims, e-Procurement with eTendering, and many more thanks to more than 4 years of concerted efforts from EU countries and the European Commission. It is part of the Commission's plan to deliver digital public services that work across borders, which are a necessary pre-condition for the Digital Single Market. They enable citizens, businesses and organisations to carry out their business with government more easily, more quickly and at lower cost.

The e-SENS Large Scale Pilot launched in April 2013 with a budget of € 27 million and is the he most complex eGovernment-related project carried out in Europe to-date . It involved more than 100 public and private organisations and more than 600 people, from 22 countries. e-SENS built technical solutions, the so called Building Blocks (such as eId, eDelivery, eSignature …), based on achievements of former Large Scale Pilot projects (PEPPOL on eProcurement, e-Codex on eJustice, STORK I and STORK II on eID and eSign, epSOS on eHealth, SPOCS on Business Life Cycle). A Building Block is a package of open and market driven standards or technical specifications that can be combined with operational services and/or mature sample software available 24-hours a day 7-days a week.

The project managed to create a common pan-European set of standards that take into account both national and sectorial diversity. It supports the implementation of various EU policies and facilitates reaching compliance with eGovernment-related legislation such as eIDAS.

The work achieved has also gained visibility outside Europe. Countries such as Australia, Canada, Malaysia, and Singapore are interested in possibly reusing e-SENS solutions for their own needs.

This project has also been an opportunity for the IT Industry to stay up-to-date with eGovernment trends, get a closer look at technical developments and identify business opportunities.

After four years of hard work the e-SENS project team succeeded in making eGovernment a reality and now is the time to hand over our work to the Connecting Europe Facility Digital (CEF digital) team at the European Commission. Today, thanks to CEF digital funding, e-SENS solutions become Digital Service Infrastructures Building Blocks available all over Europe.

As the e-SENS project officer I found it very interesting to be involved in various policy areas like health, justice and procurement. I have also enjoyed working with people from a variety of interested parties like public administrations, IT Industry organisations, standardisation bodies and academia. Together with my colleagues we had to convince people that generic basic digital infrastructures, the so called Building Blocks, can be used in very different sectors and they do not need to develop their own infrastructures to exchange data in their own domain.

Obviously, e-SENS has been a technical project building a digital architecture for cross-border public services but at the end of the day its achievement should enable citizens and businesses to travel and make business all over the EU in a much easier manner. In this respect, e-SENS will connect not only IT systems but also people.

Today, the next challenge is to ensure a wide adoption of those Connecting Europe building blocks as well as their effective governance and their long-term sustainability.