This document outlines digital screening of policy initiatives by the European Commission to ensure they are digital-ready. It discusses screening policy initiatives across the entire policy cycle to identify how technology converges with legislation. The digital screening process involves assessing initiatives based on dimensions like EU priorities, interoperability, and legal environment. Over 400 initiatives have been screened, resulting in benefits like ex-ante evaluation and fostering interoperability and digital transformation among EU digital policies and standards. Future areas of focus include applying artificial intelligence and expanding the methodology to other thematic areas.

1. Digital-ready policymaking
and the digital screening process
Better Legislation for Smoother Implementation
11th Samos Summit on ICT enabled Governance (2021)
June 29, 2021
Cécile Guasch
European Commission, Belgium
Irene Matzakou
Deloitte, Greece

2. • Who we are
• What do we mean by digital-ready law?
• Why screening policy initiatives?
• Better Regulation journey in the EC
• How does technology converge with legislation?
• Scope of digital screening: legal resources
• Digital screening across the policy cycle
• Dimensions of digital screening
• Digital screening user journey
• Digital screening by numbers
• Challenges – Opportunities – Threats – Benefits
• Future considerations
• More about digital-ready policymaking
Outline

3. Isa von Kalben
Cecile Guasch
Zsofia Sziranyi
The Legal Interoperability team
A living and continuously growing multi-disciplinary
community on better legislation to share good practices
and co-create tools with interoperability in mind around
• Digital-ready policymaking
• Legislation and technology
• Streamlined regulatory reporting process in the EU
Who we are
The Better Legislation for Smoother
Implementation community

4. “Policies (and legislative acts) are digital-ready if they enable smooth and digital by default policy
implementation through best use of digital technologies and data.“
What do we mean by digital-ready law?

5. Smoother
implementation
Better
legislation
Legal screening
results
Why screening policy initiatives

6. Better Regulation journey in the EC
EC announce its
new Better
Regulation Agenda
2015 – 2016
New Better Regulation
Guidelines and toolbox are
published
2017
Revamp is being
prepared
2020
Better Regulation Guidelines: Guideline for policymakers on topics around the policy cycle
Better Regulation Toolbox: 65 tools, including Tool 27 on Digital-ready policymaking

7. How does technology converge with legislation?
Legislation regulating the
digital environment
Legislation regulating
other environments
having digital in mind
Legislation that is
implemented with the
use of digital solutions
Legislation that is drafted
with the use of technology
(Law as Code)
Policymakers may come across digital technologies while establishing:

8. Scope of digital screening: legal resources
Legislative Initiatives
In preparation, Roadmaps
(Evaluation Roadmaps,
Inception Impact Assessments)
In force
primary legislation
Directives, Regulations
In force
secondary legislation
Delegating, Implementing
Regulations
Main unit of analysis

9. Digital screening across the policy cycle
1. Anticipating & planning with digital aspects in mind
2. Designing digital-ready policy options
3. Assessing digital impacts of policy options
4. Digital-ready legal drafting and evaluation of policies
5. Negotiating Inter-institutionally & Internationally –
Standardisation
6. Digital-ready implementation, data-driven monitoring &
evaluation

10. Dimensions of digital screening
European Union priorities
for 2019-2024 (Headlines)
A European Green Deal
A Europe fit for the digital age
An economy that works for people
A stronger Europe in the world
Promoting our European way of life
A new push for European democracy
ICT Involvement aspects
Business processes / Modeling
techniques/Alignment
Data - information flow/Volume
of exchanged information
Base registries / integrations /
interconnections / interfaces
Semantics / standards
Reusable components
EIF Principles and
Recommendations
Interoperability layers (L-O-S-T)
Openness
Transparency
Reusability
User centricity
Privacy and Security
Berlin Declaration Principles
Digital impact
Digital Impact for the EC
Digital Impact on Member States
Digital readiness
Interoperability by default
Digital/ICT involvement
etc.
The relevant legal environment
Previous legislations
Strategic documents
White papers
Reports
Legal documents
etc.

11. Digital screening user journey
Identifies relevant
research resources…
…and evidence to
support the digital
and ICT impacts,
implications and
interoperability
gaps
Then, the team creates a
summary of all findings,
and documents screening
results.
Finally, the team
reports and
receives feedback
from Policy DG.
If necessary, the
team contacts the
relevant Policy
DG to get more
information
…first, lists all
relevant policy
initiatives
Next, the team composes the
interoperability gap description
and a set of mitigation
measures…
In case of support
needed, the team
receives IOP
Expert feedback
…as well as a
proposition of
reusable
components
The IOP screening team…
In case of support
needed, the team
receives Expert
feedback
• Screening
• Assessment
• Reporting

12. • More than 3 years of consecutive digital screening
• More than 400 policy initiatives screened and assessed
• More than 200 policy initiatives of core ICT involvement
• More than 100 policy initiatives of high priority and digital impact
• More than 800 supporting documents screened (2-3 avg. per initiative)
• More than 50 in-depth assessments
• More than 300 keywords used in assessments
… and counting
Digital screening by numbers

13. Challenges – Opportunities – Threats
• Manual task and processes
• Lots of documents to screen
• Lots of fields to assess
• Lots of decision making
(especially in making the meaning out of the
text)
• A lot of time and effort
required
Keywords search
looking for specific terms; highlighting excerpts
in legal texts; …
Artificial intelligence
+ more than simple text search; new insights
with big data (text mining algorithms)
- bias of AI should be balanced with the lack of
consistency and efficiency
Digital-ready legislation
to be fostered by legal screening results

14. Benefits
• Ex-ante and ex-post evaluation
• For Policymakers, IT experts, Citizens, Legal drafters
• Establish interconnections among EU digital policies and standards
• (e.g. in the fields of open data policy, security and privacy, audio visual media, Internet
governance and web accessibility, telecommunications, electronic identification and
transactions, public services online, European interoperability framework (EIF), and more)
• Reuse existing solutions and existing data (e.g. CEF building blocks, etc.)
• Creation of the right multidisciplinary teams that bring expertise tailored to
each policy initiative needs and context
• Fostering cross-border service delivery and collaboration through
interoperability
•Future-proofing and innovation
Digital
transformation
Cost reduction
Transparency

15. Future
Considerations
Empower by applying
AI and ML
Screening draft
proposals
Spot proposals and potential
inconsistencies in digital
initiatives
E x t e n d m e t h o d o l o g y f r o m
d i g i t a l t h e m a t i c a r e a s t o
o t h e r t h e m a t i c a r e a s
Specialisation from
EU level to MS level
(translation, transposition,
national law, etc.)

16. More about digital-ready policymaking
Public: Consult our Digital-ready policymaking page on Joinup
EC only: Consult our Digital-ready policymaking wiki on Confluence

17. ISA² programme
You click, we link!
Stay in touch
ec.europa.eu/isa2
Run by the Interoperability Unit at DIGIT (European Commission) with 131€M budget, the ISA2 programme provides public administrations, businesses and
citizens with specifications and standards, software and services to reduce administrative burdens.
@ EU_isa2 ISA2 Programme EU-legal-interoperability@ec.europa.eu