IDABC stands for Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to Public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens. It encourages and supports the delivery of cross-border public sector services to citizens and enterprises in Europe and fosters efficiency and collaboration between European public administrations.

In order to achieve its objectives, IDABC issues recommendations, develops solutions and provides services that enable national and European administrations to communicate electronically while offering modern public services to businesses and citizens in Europe. But IDABC activities are not limited to producing guidelines, they also entail planning and implementing infrastructures to support interoperability.

The programme supports projects of common interest and horizontal measures:

Projects of Common Interest (PCIs): IDABC is primarily a support programme for projects of common interest that implement European eGovernment services over 14 specific policy areas such as agriculture, education, transport and the environment. More than 40 PCIs are being supported by IDABC. Examples of PCIs are the pan-European Animal Disease Notification System (ADNS), the Community Road Accident Database (CARE) and COWEBS, a multilingual internet portal that pools social security information for migrant workers from national and European sources.

Horizontal Measures (HM): interoperability is a key factor in all of IDABC’s horizontal measure activities. The implementation of pan-European eGovernment requires the collaboration of public administrations in the 30 Member States of the European Economic Area and in the EU institutions. Horizontal measures develop technical specifications, standards and infrastructure components in order to ensure efficient cross-border service delivery. The horizontal measures pursue six different objectives:

• Horizontal Pan-European eGovernment Services (PEGS) cover horizontal services to businesses and citizens;
• Basic infrastructures provide the basis for reliable exchanges of information between public sector administrations;
• Security measures facilitate secure cross-border delivery of pan-European eGovernment services;
• Interoperability measures establish principles, provide guidelines and – increasingly – list specific technical solutions that improve cross-border eGovernment;
• Measures for the dissemination and spread of good practice promote and inform about IDABC activities (for instance in open source software); and
• Strategic and support activities aim to improve the execution of the IDABC programme.