The Malmö Declaration (18th Nov 2009), a unanimous declaration by EU member state ministers responsible for eGovernment makes a number of statements that are worth extracting:

“Our public administrations should therefore:
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15. Create a noticeable and positive change in the ease with which citizens can study, work, reside and retire in any Member State. We will enable and support the creation of seamless cross-border eGovernment services by focusing our efforts on these life-stages.

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21. Pay particular attention to the benefits resulting from the use of open specifications in order to deliver services in the most cost-effective manner. We will ensure that open specifications are promoted in our national interoperability frameworks in order to lower barriers to the market. We will work to align our national interoperability frameworks with applicable European frameworks…

22. Regard innovation as an integral part of our way of working. We will promote innovation in eGovernment services through research and development, pilot projects and other implementation schemes. We will explore and develop the possibilities offered by new open and flexible service architectures and new computing paradigms.”

As a JISC Innovation Support Centre that spends a considerable amount of time supporting pilots and working (often invisibly to outsiders) on European and international open standards, including two draft European standards to support entry and exit transitions to periods of formal study, CETIS clearly has affinity with these declarations.