EIRA is a metamodel for architectural content that defines the most important architectural building blocks (ABBs) required to build interoperable e-government systems. The EIRA^© provides common terminology that can be used by people who work for public administrations in various architectural and system development tasks. The EIRA uses (and extends) the ArchiMate language as modeling notation and uses service orientation (SOA) as an architectural style.

EIRA sees four relevant views needed to develop architectures in public administration:

1. Legal view
2. Organizational view
3. Semantic view
4. Technical View

In March 2019, a new EIRA release v.3.0.0 was put online. Compared to the previous version, it contains many improvements such as:

• Review of architectural building blocks, considering their interoperability and relevance to integrated EU public services
• Adaptation to the new European Interoperability Framework with regard to the EIRA Metamodel
• Alignment with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), introduction of the position on data protection on interoperability
• Revision of EIRA views and positions
• Update on ArchiMate® 3.0.1

The sharing of the EIRA^© in the development, evaluation and communication of e-government solutions will lead to network effects and will increase coordination between public administrations. EU level and in the Member States.

The benefits of sharing the EIRA are as follows:

• Developing more interoperable e-government solutions: The consistent use of EIRA^© in the development of e-government solutions make them more interoperable for the following reasons:
  • The EIRA^© provides a common language of architectural building blocks for the design and comparison of solution architectures of e-government solutions.
  • The EIRA^© promotes the identification and use of common interoperability specifications, which should provide a basis for stable interfaces between digital public services.
  • The EIRA^© contributes to making better use of the EIF’s principles and recommendations.
  • Enhanced application of the principles of service-oriented architecture (SOA)^.
• Cost savings through better assessment of solution portfolios: The EIRA^© helps to achieve cost savings related to the rationalization of the portfolio of solutions and solution modules (e.g. abolition of obsolete SBBs or generalization of building blocks)
• Cost savings through improved discoverability: EIRA^© and TES Cartography allow reusable solution building blocks to be consistently documented and classified, so that interoperable solution building blocks can be found and understood easier more conveniently.

EIRA supports the development of e-government systems in various areas:

• Accelerate the design of systems to support the delivery of interoperable digital public services (across borders and sectors)
• Provide a reference model for comparing existing architectures in different policy- and thematic areas to identify priorities for convergence and reuse
• Support documentation of key interoperability elements of complex systems and facilitate the exchange of reusable solutions
• Make it easier to discover and reuse interoperability solutions using the CarTool

In the next part of this blog series we will discuss CarTool in more detail.