Interoperability - a challenge of the EU services directive

The EU Services Directive (EU-SD), which was passed in December 2006, should simplify access to the services market in all Member States of the European Union and eliminate bureaucratic barriers for Service Providers. This chapter presents an overview of the major functional components and processes that are necessary to implement and run the EU-SD between all stakeholders such as Service Providers, newly introduced Points of Single Contact and Responsible Public Authorities, based on a general framework for federated enterprise SOA. Especially in Germany, consisting of federated and autonomous federal states, but equally between different Member States, interoperability between different components is one of the major challenges of the EU-SD. This chapter elaborates on the interoperabilit y aspect of data/document exchange between the stakeholders, using a secure "call by reference" concept that is implemented by an Electronic Safe, together with appropriate concepts for identity and access management.