For the purposes of this Decision, the following definitions shall apply:

1. (1)

   ‘interoperability’ means the ability of disparate and diverse organisations to interact towards mutually beneficial and agreed common goals, involving the sharing of information and knowledge between the organisations, through the business processes they support, by means of the exchange of data between their respective ICT systems;

2. (2)

   ‘interoperability framework’ means an agreed approach to interoperability for organisations that wish to work together towards the joint delivery of public services, which, within its scope of applicability, specifies a set of common elements such as vocabulary, concepts, principles, policies, guidelines, recommendations, standards, specifications and practices;

3. (3)

   ‘common frameworks’ means reference architectures, specifications, concepts, principles, policies, recommendations, standards, methodologies, guidelines, semantic assets and similar approaches and documents, taken individually or together in a set;

4. (4)

   ‘common services’ means the organisational and technical capacity to deliver a single outcome to European public administrations, including operational systems, applications and digital infrastructures of a generic nature which meet common user requirements across policy or geographical areas, along with their supporting operational governance;

5. (5)

   ‘generic tools’ means systems, reference platforms, shared and collaborative platforms, and generic components which meet common user requirements across policy or geographical areas;

6. (6)

   ‘interoperability solutions’ means common services and generic tools facilitating cooperation between disparate and diverse organisations, either autonomously funded and developed under the ISA² programme or developed in cooperation with other Union initiatives, based on identified requirements of European public administrations;

7. (7)

   ‘actions’ means projects, solutions already in an operational phase and accompanying measures;

8. (8)

   ‘project’ means a time-limited sequence of well-defined tasks addressing identified user needs through a phased approach;

9. (9)

   ‘suspended actions’ means the actions of the ISA² programme for which financing is suspended for a certain period of time, but the objective of which is still valid, and which remain subject to monitoring and evaluation of the ISA² programme;

10. (10)

    ‘accompanying measures’ means:

    1. (a)

       strategic measures;

    2. (b)

       information, communication of the benefits of the ISA² programme, and awareness-raising measures, aimed at European public administrations and, where appropriate, at businesses and citizens;

    3. (c)

       measures in support of the management of the ISA² programme;

    4. (d)

       measures in relation to the sharing of experience and the exchange and promotion of best practices;

    5. (e)

       measures to promote the re-use of existing interoperability solutions;

    6. (f)

       measures aimed at community-building and capability-raising; and

    7. (g)

       measures aimed at establishing synergies with initiatives relevant to interoperability in other areas of Union policy;

11. (11)

    ‘supporting instruments for public administrations’ means the interoperability tools, frameworks, guidelines and specifications that support European public administrations when designing, implementing and operating interoperability solutions;

12. (12)

    ‘European public administrations’ means public administrations at Union, national, regional and local levels;

13. (13)

    ‘end-users’ means European public administrations, businesses, including SMEs and microenterprises, and citizens;

14. (14)

    ‘key interoperability enablers’ means interoperability solutions that are necessary to enable the efficient and effective delivery of public services across administrations;

15. (15)

    ‘European Interoperability Reference Architecture’ or ‘EIRA’ means a generic structure, comprising principles and guidelines applying to the implementation of interoperability solutions in the Union;

16. (16)

    ‘European Interoperability Cartography’ or ‘EIC’ means a repository of interoperability solutions for European public administrations provided by Union institutions and Member States, presented in a common format and complying with specific re-usability and interoperability criteria that can be represented on the EIRA.