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Publications Office of the European Union Annual Management Report 2018
Publications Office of the European Union
Annual Management Report 2018
Publications Office of the European Union
Annual Management Report 2018
Annual Management Report 2018
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Foreword by Alfredo Calot Escobar, Chair of the Management Committee
The Publications Office today provides access to official EU information in as many as 24 official EU languages and in formats, which in 1969, the year of its foundation, were unthinkable, thus showing how the Office has adapted and kept up with the technological and societal opportunities and challenges of the digital era.
In this spirit, in November 2018 the Office organised a conference on ‘The Future of Publishing’, bringing together industry experts with managers of the EU institutions for thought-provoking discussions regarding the latest developments, challenges and directions of technology in the fields of information management and publishing.
One important avenue is the publishing and exploitation of open government data. In 2018, the Office not only took over the operational management of the European Data Portal with public data from 34 European countries, in order to rationalise operations with the data publishing of the EU institutions, but also strengthened its engagement with user communities. The Office organised the second EU Datathon competition on the reuse of data from the EU Open Data Portal in collaboration with Member States, EU institutions and agencies, challenging teams to create applications addressing specific policy or societal issues related to innovation, legal data, public procurement or food data. The Office also organised in May 2018 a 2-day conference with stakeholders on the ‘Superpowers of Procurement Data’, given its economic importance.
Another key element of the Office’s activities is enhancing transparency and ease of access to EU information. This has had an impact on many dissemination channels of the Office, including the following:
The EUR-Lex website was given a new, simplified design, with a new display of interinstitutional procedures to facilitate the traceability of the adoption of a legal act. The website now covers new types of documents such as opinions from the European Parliament committees and from the European Central Bank on draft national legislation and it provides better access to the texts of national transposition measures.
CORDIS launched a new user-centric website, along with a new design for its popular Research*eu magazine and the thematic Results Pack brochures, which continue to be a pillar of the Commission’s strategy for the dissemination and exploitation of research results.
The TED website started publishing daily reports on the contracts awarded by the EU institutions.
The European Commission acknowledged the competencies and efforts of the Office in November by appointing it Domain Leader in the field of publications. This leadership role will help improve efficiency in publishing, strengthen the messages and increase the quality and impact of publications. The Management Committee is looking forward to supporting the Office in extending the synergies proposed to Commission services to all EU institutions and agencies.
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These, and all the many other actions which form part of the Strategic objectives 2017-2025 — adopted unanimously by the Management Committee in 2017 — were, and will be, greatly facilitated by the significant reorganisation of the Office in April 2018. The Management Committee is also proud to have increased the percentage of women in middle management positions at the Office in 2018 to over 53 %.
The Office celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and, as in the year of its foundation, the Court of Justice is honoured to chair its Management Committee. Throughout these 50 years, the Office has played its role serving European integration through the efforts of its staff, current and past, by providing all EU institutions, agencies and bodies with its services as well as providing citizens with access to official EU information. Created in 1969 by an interinstitutional decision to publish the publications of the five institutions of the then European Communities in four languages, the Office now offers its services to around 150 EU institutions, agencies and bodies.
I am confident that the Office will continue to further evolve and live up to the growing expectations of citizens and the EU institutions. On behalf of the Management Committee, I would like to thank all the staff members for their commitment, enthusiasm and professionalism in carrying forward our common goals.
Alfredo Calot Escobar
Chair of the Publications Office Management Committee
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Contents
Mission statement: Access to EU law and publications 8
Executive summary 9
A. Context and strategy 12 I. The Management Committee 12 II. Relations with EU institutions and other organisations 12
1. Relations with EU institutions 12 2. Service agreements 13 3. Other organisations 13
III. Implementation of the Strategic objectives 2017-2025 13 1. Strategic objective 1 — Secured and automated exchange of legal data 13 2. Strategic objective 2 — Rationalisation of the production of publications 14 3. Strategic objective 3 — Refocusing quality control 14 4. Strategic objective 4 — Linked EU information, increased interoperability and federated
search 15 5. Strategic objective 5 — The Official Journal act by act 15 6. Strategic objective 6 — Reference centre for the production of publications 15 7. Strategic objective 7 — Zero stock 16 8. Strategic objective 8 — Single point of access for public procurement 16 9. Strategic objective 9 — Legal deposit scheme 17 10. Strategic objective 10 — Central point of access and reuse 17
B. Activities and services 18 I. Production 18
1. Production of the Official Journal and other EU legal information 18 1.1. Official Journal L and C 18 1.2. Budgetary documents 18 1.3. Official Journal S and public procurement 18 1.4. Case-law 18 1.5. Consolidation of EU law 19 1.6. Summaries of EU legislation 19
2. Services related to digital and paper publications 19 2.1. Management of incoming requests and setting out new services 19 2.2. Overview of the production of general publications 19 2.3. Web-based and new media products 20 2.4. Graphic design 20 2.5. In-house printing 20 2.6. Standards and cooperative production tools 21 2.7. Digitisation 21
3. Editorial services 21 3.1. Language editing of publications 21 3.2. Interinstitutional style guide 22 3.3. Survey services 22
4. Interinstitutional systems, workflows and platforms 22 4.1. Interinstitutional electronic workflows for decision-making 22 4.2. Systems for sending procurement notices 22 4.3. eTendering platform 23 4.4. Management of interinstitutional workflows for studies 23
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II. Access and reuse 23 1. Online services 23
1.1. EUR-Lex — Access to legal information 23 1.2. OP Portal — Access to the collections managed by the Office 24 1.3. TED — Access to public procurement information 25 1.4. CORDIS — Access to research results information 26 1.5. EU Open Data Portal — Access to EU institutions’ reusable data 26 1.6. Web analytics 27
2. Distribution management 28 2.1. Distribution and storage 28 2.2. Administration and reporting of costs related to distribution 28
3. Promotion, mailing lists and helpdesk 28 3.1. Promotion of EU content and services of the Office 28 3.2. Mailing list management 29 3.3. Helpdesk and customer support 29
III. Information management 30 1. Data, information and knowledge management 30 2. Data protection 30 3. Harmonisation of metadata and formats 30
3.1. Standardisation of metadata 30 3.2. Interoperability of document formats 31 3.3. Management of controlled vocabularies 31
4. Indexation and associated services 31 4.1. Assignment of identifiers including the international numbers 31 4.2. Production and dissemination of bibliographic records 32 4.3. Legal analysis of documents published on EUR-Lex 32 4.4. Production, reception and validation of metadata and content 32
5. Management of the common repository (Cellar) 33 6. Long-term preservation 33
6.1. Digital archiving of publications 33 6.2. Web preservation 33 6.3. Conversion into formats suitable for long-term preservation 34
7. Copyright 34 7.1. Copyright advice 34 7.2. Editorial partnership and co-publishing 34
IV. Preparatory action, pilot projects and ISA² activities 34 1. Preparatory action ‘Linked open data in European public administration’ 34 2. Pilot projects 35
2.1. PublicAccess.eu 35 2.2. Reading disability and document access, a possible approach 35
3. ISA² activities 35 3.1. European Legislation Identifier 35 3.2. Standardisation of public procurement data 36 3.3. Semantic interoperability for European public administration 36 3.4. Development of an open data service 36 3.5. Public multilingual knowledge management infrastructure for digital single market
36 3.6. Digital management of the ordinary legislative procedure 37
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C. Management 37 I. Human resources 37
1. Staff 37 2. Training 37
II. Budget 38 1. Budgetary accounts 38 2. Commercial accounts 38
2.1. Balance sheet 38 2.2. Sales revenue 38
III. Procurement and contract management 38 IV. Governance and enterprise architecture 39 V. Infrastructure 39
1. Facilities management and supporting resources 39 1.1. Buildings 39 1.2. Safety and health 39 1.3. Supporting resources 40
2. Document management 40 2.1. Physical archives 40 2.2. Document Management Officer 40
3. Information systems 40 3.1. Data centre, IT infrastructure consolidation and IT systems 40 3.2. IT projects 41
4. IT security 41 4.1. Firewall 41 4.2. Business continuity planning 42
VI. Internal control environment 42 1. Internal control coordination 42 2. Risk management 42 3. Evaluation 42 4. Financial control 43 5. Audit and discharge observations and recommendations 43
VII. Internal environmental management 44 1. Energy 44 2. Waste management 44 3. Paper consumption 44
D. Internal communication and social dialogue 45
Annexes 46 Annex I: Governing bodies and key persons 47 Annex II: Interinstitutional committees 48 Annex III: Tables and graphs 56 Annex IV: Financial statements 78
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Mission statement: Access to EU law and publications
The Publications Office of the European Union provides interinstitutional publishing services on behalf of all the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies. Its mission is to publish EU law and other information and to make it available for easy long-term access and reuse.
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Executive summary
MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS
INTERINSTITUTIONAL SYNERGIES AND EFFICIENCIES IN THE PUBLICATIONS DOMAIN
In order to address the growing demand for new media publications, comprehensive services were offered to all EU institutions for products that were ever more interactive and complex — audiovisual, animated content, apps, web pages (HTML), with an upward trend in producing more infographics and data visualisations. The management of corporate EU app accounts and the update of apps remained a significant activity with 25 new app releases and 563 updates (all language versions).
The exercise to centralise printing tasks using the EU institutions’ internal print assets progressed, in particular with the transfer at the beginning of 2018 of the Office for Infrastructure and Logistics’ print assets.
Under the synergies and efficiencies exercise launched by the European Commission for external communication, the Corporate Management Board agreed on the need for increased oversight of the publication process, with the Office as domain leader for publications and in close cooperation with Commission’s DG Communication, to raise awareness amongst the Commission directorates general and ensure the added value of the publications. The Office’s vision for Domain Leadership in the field of publications, providing for a centralised production of publications and a general decrease in the number of products in order to cut out message redundancy and raise the quality and impact of publications, will be presented to the Corporate Management Board in 2019. The Office’s goals may be achieved by developing a series of interlinked activities such as editorial support, corporate planning and governance, translation request coordination, a feedback mechanism and community specific training. Based on the Office’s interinstitutional mandate, synergies proposed to Commission directorates-general can be extended to all EU institutions.
A new editorial team completed a pilot project on the assessment of 15 selected publications, involving 13 author services. The assessment provided feedback on design, content, format and distribution plans, to help authors to readjust them and thus make a wider and more intentional impact through their publications. The decision on whether to scale the editorial assessment up to a fully available service will be taken during 2019.
New templates were designed and are currently being developed to provide authors with simple tools to structure documents at source, simplifying and speeding up the production process and provision of datasets, and to allow the production of accessible publications for visually impaired readers. Guidelines on accessibility for authors were updated and republished. Development also started on a set of accessibility videos and e-learning modules for decision makers and author services, with their delivery planned in the first half of 2019.
The Office set up a dashboard on web analytics providing information on the consultation of the publications in the OP Portal, such as visits, page views, downloads, geographical distribution, searched terms, etc. Different analytical parameters can be filtered, e.g. global consultation, selection of publications of one/multiple institution(s), top consulted topics of interest, and top consulted
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publications based on the country of origin of the visits. The dashboard, which was presented to EU institutions in order to gather feedback, is expected to be operational and available to the EU institutions during 2019.
ENHANCED INTEROPERABILITY FOR THE EU INSTITUTIONS’ DOCUMENTS
Interinstitutional cooperation for the development and maintenance of common standards for both the structuring of content and the exchange of information was strengthened by the merger of the Interinstitutional Metadata Maintenance Committee (IMMC) and Interinstitutional Formats Committee (IFC) into the Interinstitutional Metadata and Formats Committee (IMFC). Its current work is focused on EU legislative process support.
Almost all exchanges between the Office and the EU institutions of public documents related to the EU legislative process (ordinary legislative procedure) and for publication on EUR-Lex were implemented via IMMC-based workflows. Within the Office, all publishing chains are now based on IMMC-based workflows.
For the structuring of content, the Common Vocabulary, describing the structure and semantics of legal documents at business level, and the Common Exchange Model, describing the implementation of the concepts defined by the Common Vocabulary in XML, were further developed. A major new version of the Common Exchange Model was adopted by the IMFC.
ACCESS AND REUSE, AND LINKING OF DATA
The EUR-Lex website was given a new, simplified design which is also optimised for mobile devices. In addition, a new display of interinstitutional procedures facilitates the traceability of the different stages leading to the adoption of a legal act. The collections’ coverage was enriched with new types of documents such as opinions from the European Parliament committees and from the European Central Bank on draft national legislation. Additionally, the text of national transposition measures from eight Member States are now directly accessible via EUR-Lex.
The performance and stability of the OP Portal platform and OP Portal Search service were enhanced. The EU Vocabularies, replacing two legacy websites, and EU Whoiswho content were integrated into the OP Portal allowing users to perform searches across more collections in a multilingual set-up.
In order to respond to the European Parliament’s and European Court of Auditors’ recommendations for increased transparency of public procurement, reports with information on the contracts awarded by the EU institutions were made available on TED website on a daily basis. These provide data on the entity awarding the contract, the winners, the subject matter and the values awarded. New features will also be added in eTendering, such as annual lists of contractors, ex-ante publicity of low value procedures, extended search, and email notifications about updates to calls for tender. Works in view of listing functional and technical requirements of a common electronic one-stop shop for the EU institutions’ procurement activities are ongoing.
CORDIS launched its new user- and mobile-friendly website, along with a new design for its popular Research*eu magazine and thematic Results Pack brochures. The open data repository and multilingual articles for professionals continue to be a pillar of the Commission’s strategy for the dissemination and exploitation of research results.
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The Office organised the second EU Datathon competition on the reuse of data from the EU Open Data Portal in collaboration with the European Legislation Identifier (ELI) Taskforce, the European Food Safety Authority, and three Commission directorates-general. The competition challenged teams to create applications addressing specific policy or societal issues related to innovation, legal data, public procurement data, or food data. The outreach of the event was very successful with enterprises, start-ups, individuals and students from all over Europe, and the results provided invaluable insights on what can be achieved through the reuse of open data.
The management of the European Data Portal, with over 880 000 datasets from 78 data catalogues from European countries, was transferred from the Commission’s DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology to the Office in order to align approaches and rationalise operations in the domain of open data.
The Office developed the strategy and roadmap for achieving linked open data, with the aim of positioning the Office as a centre of expertise for linked open data. Within the scope of the preparatory action ‘Linked Open Data in European public administration’, the Office worked on identifying ways to improve user experience and publication findability on the OP Portal via the use of linked open data. The results will set out how the proof of concept of linked open data and data services could be applied to other open data generated by European public administrations.
LONG-TERM PRESERVATION
The Office drew up a digital preservation plan to set up its vision and strategy on long-term digital preservation. The plan was revised following input from EU institutions. The final version was presented to and adopted by the Management Committee.
GOVERNANCE, MANAGEMENT AND ORGANISATION-RELATED EVENTS
In order to reflect the priorities of the Strategic objectives 2017-2025, adopted unanimously by the Management Committee in 2017, the Office underwent a significant reorganisation in April 2018 following intensive consultation with all concerned.
Decisions were taken by the Management Committee in order to achieve efficiency gains and interinstitutional synergies, such as the simplification of budget management for legal publications, to be implemented in 2020, measures to rationalise the functioning of interinstitutional committees and working groups, and the use of the Creative Commons licencing to facilitate reuse. The Management Committee also closely monitored the implementation of the Strategic objectives 2017-2025.
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A. Context and strategy
I. The Management Committee
The Publications Office is governed by an interinstitutional Management Committee in which each institution is represented by its Secretary-General or, in the case of the Court of Justice, by the Court’s Registrar, who is currently the Committee’s Chairperson. The European Central Bank participates as an observer. The Management Committee, in the common interest of all institutions, adopts the strategic objectives of the Office, sets the guidelines for general policies, particularly as regards publishing and distribution, and ensures that the Office contributes within its areas of competence to the implementation of the institutions’ information and communication policies. These tasks are outlined in Decision 2009/496/EC, Euratom on the organisation and operation of the Publications Office (1).
The Management Committee met four times in 2018 (23 February, 13 April, 29 June (Members) and 26 October). Important decisions were taken in order to achieve efficiency gains and interinstitutional synergies, such as the simplification of budget management for legal publications, to be implemented in 2020, measures to rationalise the functioning of interinstitutional committees and working groups, and the use of Creative Commons licencing to facilitate reuse. The Management Committee also closely monitored the implementation of the Strategic objectives 2017-2025, approved unanimously in 2017.
II. Relations with EU institutions and other organisations
1. Relations with EU institutions
In order to improve communication with the EU institutions, the PubliCare website was revamped, with a main focus on the Office’s main activities: production, access and reuse, and long-term preservation.
Three two-day annual seminars were organised: in April with EU agencies, in June with Commission representations and in November with directorates-general of the Commission and other institutions. Representatives of all EU institutions, including members of the Management Committee, actively participated in the Office-organised conference on ‘The Future of Publishing’ on 24 October 2018 to discuss the latest developments and trends of technology in the fields of information management and publishing. Also in October, several institutions participated in the final event of the second EU Datathon (2) competition on the reuse of data from the EU Open Data Portal (3), organised in partnership with the ELI Taskforce, the European Food Safety Authority and three Commission directorates-general.
(1) OJ L 168, 30.6.2009, p. 41. (2) https://publications.europa.eu/en/web/eudatathon (3) http://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/home
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2. Service agreements
The Office signed the revised standard service agreement on the use of its services with the following EU institutions and agencies: European Parliament, Council of the European Union, European Court of Auditors, European Economic and Social Committee, European Committee of the Regions, European Asylum Support Office, and European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
3. Other organisations
The European Forum of Official Gazettes held its annual plenary meeting in Oslo on 7 and 8 June. Participants came from 27 countries, mainly in Europe, but also from Asia and Africa. They exchanged best practices on the publishing techniques and on digital solutions that are gradually replacing paper and traditional media. The forum looked at different national solutions for disseminating law and linking EU law and national law, for example via the European Legislation Identifier. Another topic was consolidation, which makes the law more accessible, ensure legal certainty and, from that, create an environment favourable to businesses and investments. The European Data Protection Supervisor presented the new rules under the General Data Protection Regulation (4) and how these impact the work of official publishers. The exchanges allowed a better understanding of how EU programmes, such as ISA² (5) or the Connecting Europe Facility — Digital (6), can help public administrations and official publishers.
The Office actively contributed to the discussion, provided the secretariat for the Forum and was responsible for the management of its publications and website, for coordinating working groups and to provide technical and organisational support. The next plenary meeting will take place in The Hague, the Netherlands, 20-21 June 2019.
III. Implementation of the Strategic objectives 2017-2025
1. Strategic objective 1 — Secured and automated exchange of legal data
Based on version 2 of the Common Vocabulary, the newly established IMFC adopted version 2 of the Common Exchange Model in November 2018. The Formex to Akoma Ntoso converter (FMX2AK) based on the Common Exchange Model was further developed.
(4) Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the
protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) (OJ L 119, 4.5.2016, p. 1).
(5) ISA²: Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens (https://ec.europa.eu/isA.2/home_en).
(6) https://ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/display/CEFDIGITAL/Building+Blocks
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The use of the IMMC exchange protocol was extended to all EU institutions. Thus nearly all legal data exchanges between the EU institutions themselves and the EU institutions and the Office are conducted through the IMMC exchange protocol.
As part of the ongoing cloud migration project, the IMMCbuilder tool as a cloud service was deployed in production at the end of 2018.
2. Strategic objective 2 — Rationalisation of the production of publications
The continuous rationalisation of the production of publications was addressed through two main projects.
The first project refers to the development of a new production workflow management system, covering the whole process from reception of requests to the delivery of final products for dissemination. Partial results of the functional analysis were available in 2018. The technical analysis will be launched in March 2019 and the development of the new production workflow will begin at the end of 2019.
The second project covers all actions aimed at producing more structured, reusable and accessible publications. The development of a generic template for the creation of well-structured manuscripts started at the end of 2018 and its release is expected mid-2019 together with the integration of templates in Eurolook (7). Guidelines on accessibility for authors were updated and republished on PubliCare. Development started on a set of accessibility videos and e-learning modules for decision makers and author services, with their delivery planned in the first half of 2019.
3. Strategic objective 3 — Refocusing quality control
In the context of the Office’s reorganisation, an editorial team was created and completed a pilot project on the assessment of a set of selected publications. The editors prepared prototype tools and working methods, and 15 publications were assessed (13 author services involved). The assessment provided feedback on design, content, format and distribution plans, to help authors to readjust and thus make a wider and more intentional impact through their publications, while maintaining consistency with their high-level communication objectives. The decision on whether to scale editorial assessment up to a fully available new service is expected to be taken during 2019.
An outsourcing strategy for language-editing services was set out in order to refocus internal resources on tasks and services that meet the requirements of author services, notably in terms of timeliness, and to allow for the implementation of new high-value services as proposed as part of the Domain Leadership Publications. A more extensive and systematic outsourcing of repetitive tasks, backed by solid quality requirements, should alleviate pressures on internal resources. A medium-value procedure for outsourced language editing services in English was launched, to be followed in 2019 by other languages.
(7) Eurolook is a module which is fully integrated into Microsoft Word. It makes it possible to create
letters, internal notes, reports, speeches, etc. easily and in all EU languages.
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4. Strategic objective 4 — Linked EU information, increased interoperability and federated search
A landscaping exercise of the EU institutions repositories and websites was carried out for the cross-institutional search project and the identification of their current links with the Office’s content. Additionally, the suitability of the OP Portal’s search engine for a federated search solution was confirmed; subsequently, specifications and a roadmap for implementation were defined. The preliminary analysis as well as the setting out of the user requirements for the access to TED content through the OP Portal were finalised. Further improvements were implemented in terms of providing seamless integration of the Office’s content on external sites by means of widgets.
The EU Vocabularies (8) website was deployed on the OP Portal platform in December 2018, thus providing access to reference data managed by the Office, such as the EuroVoc multilingual thesaurus (9), authority tables, etc., and replacing two legacy websites (EuroVoc and the Metadata Registry). Interoperability between key controlled vocabularies used at the Commission and other institutions was evaluated.
The Office worked on the strategy and roadmap for achieving linked open data, with the aim of positioning the Office as a centre of expertise for linked open data and to align the efforts in terms of unique and persistent URIs (10), data models and data quality. The OP Portal promoted reuse services through its easy-to-use interfaces allowing access to and reuse of linked open data covering the collections of EU law and EU publications stored in the Office’s common repository.
5. Strategic objective 5 — The Official Journal act by act
New contracts allowing for an act-by-act production of the Official Journal were signed in October 2018. The daily production contract will be signed in April 2019.
The business part of the act-by-act impact analysis was completed while the technical part will be finalised before the end of the first quarter of 2019. Work started for drafting the specifications of the new information system for the act-by-act production of the Official Journal.
Council Regulation (EU) 2018/2056 (11) was adopted at the end of the year, introducing the possibility to authenticate the Official Journal with an electronic seal. A new information system was developed to enable implementation and will be operational in 2019.
6. Strategic objective 6 — Reference centre for the production of publications
On 27 November 2018 the Corporate Management Board of the Commission endorsed the proposals designed by the Office as Domain Leader in the field of (8) https://publications.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/ (9) https://publications.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/th-dataset/-/resource/dataset/eurovoc (10) URI: Uniform resource identifier. (11) Council Regulation (EU) 2018/2056 of 6 December 2018 amending Regulation (EU) No 216/2013
on the electronic publication of the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ L 329, 27.12.2018, p. 1).
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publications. Interlinked actions were approved, based on a centralised production of publications and governance allowing for a more efficient use of resources through a general decrease in the number of low-impact publications and redundant messages. The Office also designed a strategy to support authors in raising the impact of their publications, coupling corporate planning and feedback. Ex-ante editorial feedback on format and content was launched as part of Strategic objective 3, while ex-post feedback on performance and governance mechanisms were designed within Strategic objective 6. Discussions with the main stakeholders within the Commission are ongoing. Deployment is planned as from 2019 onwards and closely linked with resource allocation, which is under discussion and needs to be approved by the Corporate Management Board.
A pilot project on the coordination of translation requests and their follow-up on behalf of author services was discussed and conceptually agreed with Commission’s DG Translation. It will start in January 2019 for two main users of the Office’s services. A community specific extensive training programme was created in order to foster knowledge sharing and the professionalisation of the community in the various publishing-activities areas. The regular delivery of training and presentations is linked to resource allocations, currently under evaluation by the Commission’s central services.
The process to centralise printing tasks using the EU institutions’ internal print assets progressed. Print assets of the Office for Infrastructure and Logistics in Luxembourg (OIL) were transferred to the Office. Integration of other institutions and/or services in order to extend the collaborative use of print assets will continue, notably with the Office for Infrastructure and Logistics in Brussels (OIB).
7. Strategic objective 7 — Zero stock
The Management Committee agreed on a more detailed interpretation of ‘zero stock’, e.g. the exclusion of stock waiting for distribution via mailing lists or the warehousing of expensive-to-produce and/or important publications — this means a ‘zero surplus stock’ policy. Even though the Office raised author services’ awareness towards better stock management, these remained at the level of the previous year’s average levels. The Office started a campaign on the importance of avoiding excessive stocks: the objective is to improve the initial planning through appropriate print-run levels in conformity with targeted mailing lists. A series of awareness actions were launched towards the end of 2018.
Proposals for destocking outdated publications were sent regularly to stock owners, however most author services were hesitant to destock. Although only 1.95 million copies were destocked in 2018 compared to 3.78 million in 2017, the stock increase was limited to 61 082 copies (+ 0.5 %).
8. Strategic objective 8 — Single point of access for public procurement
The Office gathered and drafted functional requirements for setting up a single point of access (one-stop shop) for public procurement information. In order to increase transparency, EU institutions contract-information reports are available in TED on a daily basis.
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The Office worked with Commission’s DG Informatics on a proof of concept regarding an application programming interface gateway to ensure machine-to-machine services management. Progress was achieved on the public procurement ontology following cooperation with a working group of national experts. The Office gathered and analysed valuable information regarding the identification of contracting authorities and promoted the use and need for a common identifier.
9. Strategic objective 9 — Legal deposit scheme
The EU legal deposit scheme is intended to establish a fully operational legal deposit for all the publications of the EU institutions. The Office is working on a draft of the scheme which is to be released for interinstitutional consultation during the first half of 2019.
10. Strategic objective 10 — Central point of access and reuse
Through the EU Open Data Portal the Office continued to promote the reuse policy as specified in Commission Decision 2011/833/EU (12). The Office contributed to the Commission inter-service group on reuse instruments, which proposed that the Creative Commons licence be adopted in order to facilitate reuse by citizens and businesses. Landscaping exercises were carried out among Commission services and agencies in order to identify new datasets suitable for publishing on the EU Open Data Portal as well as ways to automate the exchange of metadata. The process with the other EU institutions is ongoing. The landscaping action contributes to the new Commission data strategy, data@EC. The operational management of the European Data Portal (13) was transferred from the Commission’s DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology to the Office in order to align efforts in the domain of open data. The Office developed a new Digital Object Identifier (DOI) data service in the EU Open Data Portal for the EU data providers; it allows for automatic or manual assignment of DOIs to datasets and data catalogue, and the availability of dataset-related metadata in DataCite (14). The Office launched a study on the EU citation styles in order to find harmonised and consistent methods and tools to promote and ensure a standardised approach to cite EU contents across all EU institutions. This will facilitate the interconnection of contents, including those exposed as linked data. The metadata standard recommended for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP) was implemented on EU Open Data Portal. This will increase interoperability with other data portals in Europe. The EU Open Data Portal enriched the collection of reuse examples, with 95 web and mobile apps described on the ‘Applications’ tab.
(12) OJ L 330, 14.12.2011, p. 39. (13) https://data.europa.eu/europeandataportal (14) DataCite is a global organisation that provides persistent identifiers (DOIs) for data and digital
objects (primarily research data), to help locate, identify and cite data.
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B. Activities and services
I. Production
1. Production of the Official Journal and other EU legal information
1.1. Official Journal L and C
The number of pages published for the OJ L (legislative acts) series decreased by 1.2 % to 717 899 from 726 753 the previous year. The number of pages published in the C (resolutions, recommendations, opinions, information, preparatory acts, notices, etc.) series increased by 2.4 % to 639 360 from 624 074.
The number of issues published was 361 for the OJ L series (of which 27 were LI) and 528 for the OJ C series (of which 53 were OJ CA and 8 CI), compared to 355 and 499 respectively in 2017. All legally binding OJ editions were published in an electronic format.
1.2. Budgetary documents
The number of published pages of the draft general budget was 64 032 (2 784 pages per linguistic version). The total of budgetary documents (the draft budget, the line-by-line budget, the draft amending budgets and the draft amending letters) totalled 120 934 pages (compared to 84 984 pages in 2017). The increase is explained by the publication of a second version of the draft budget in November following the end of the conciliation phase without agreement between the Council and the European Parliament on 19 November.
1.3. Official Journal S and public procurement
A record 578 501 public procurement notices were published in the Supplement to the Official Journal (OJ S), an increase of 9.4 % compared to 2017. Notices received in structured electronic format accounted for 99.4 % of the total. The Office adapted the OJ S publication schedule: as of 1 January 2019, the OJ S is published from Monday to Friday.
In close cooperation with the Commission’s DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, the Office established a data model for procurement information which will be the basis for a new generation of electronic notification forms; the underlying exchange protocol for the new standard will be Universal Business Language. The Office became a member of the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards in order to participate in the setting out of further standards if required.
1.4. Case-law
Case-law was solely produced on a document-by-document basis according to the judicial calendar of the Court of Justice. More than 54 000 documents (– 6.8 % compared to 2017), corresponding to over 400 000 pages (– 21.4 % compared to 2017), were published.
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1.5. Consolidation of EU law
The number of legal acts in force that were consolidated (in at least one linguistic version) reached 4 382. The number of newly produced consolidated versions of legal acts was 1 402. More than 2.4 million PDF pages of consolidated texts were produced (4.3 % more than in 2017). Their consistency was checked in order to ensure correct implementation of the amendments and corrigenda to the legal provisions.
1.6. Summaries of EU legislation
The total number of summaries of EU legislation reached 4 528, of which 1 810 reflect legislation in force and 2 718 are archived. In addition there are 253 up-to-date glossary entries. The percentage of summaries published in all official languages increased to 85 % compared to 66 % in 2017. A total of 197 summaries of EU legislation were produced or completely redrafted and a further 154 summaries were updated taking into account the most recent legislative changes.
The Office implemented a new optimised workflow in April 2018, which resulted in quicker publication of the summaries. Based on user feedback and internal analysis, further improvements were implemented as regards the display, interlinking and content of the summaries.
2. Services related to digital and paper publications
2.1. Management of incoming requests and setting out new services
A total of 143 author services from the EU institutions, agencies and bodies submitted requests (141 in 2017), the total number of requests amounting to 7 151 in 2018. In total, 36 521 publications were identified with a catalogue number, out of which 26 736 titles were produced with the Office (72 %). A new application for requesting services (Dempub) was released in January 2018. It contains new and improved functionalities that make it easier to use. Guidelines were issued to help authors set out their service needs.
Services were tested to respond to new needs in the communication area, as proposed as part of the Domain Leadership Publications: a pilot for ex-ante editorial assessment of publications was completed, and a pilot for the management of translations on behalf of authors was launched. The decision whether to scale up to full availability of such new services is expected to be taken in the course of 2019.
2.2. Overview of the production of general publications
The overall number of requests (projects) from author services for general publications was rather stable compared to the previous year (– 1 %) while the number of titles produced increased by 27 %, which reflects an increase in the number of language versions produced per project, notably by the Commission. An upward trend in producing more infographics and data visualisations continued. The demand for urgent production grew, notably by the Commission Spokesperson’s Service which has to produce politically sensitive content within a very short space of time, e.g. materials on the Multiannual Financial Framework and State of the Union debate.
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2.3. Web-based and new media products
The e-book production level remained stable, with one author responsible for nearly half of the total number of deliverables requested. The production of new types of media (audiovisual products, apps, HTML, etc.) decreased by 13 % compared to 2017. Several digital publications were produced using new interactive technologies, including data visualisation and virtual reality.
The regular update of apps and the management of corporate app accounts (relationship with the app stores) remained a significant area of activity with 25 new app releases and 563 updates (all language versions). Four existing mobile applications were transferred to the corporate app accounts. The service of providing interactive information visualisations progressed, with seven new projects. The Office started to work with virtual reality technology and launched two projects to develop virtual reality mobile applications.
2.4. Graphic design
A total of 270 graphic-design projects were accepted, representing a 36 % increase compared to 2017. This was partially due to the fact that the graphic-design framework contract expired and more tasks were completed internally. Conceptual tasks, such as the development of infographics and animations, nearly doubled. Over 100 stand-alone infographics were created in addition to eight animations. The workload of the Office’s graphic designers also included the provision of quality assessment and advice on the design of visual elements of projects, which were not reported as specific graphic design projects. Designers were also involved in the preparation of the new call for tender for the graphic-design services contract due to start in early 2019.
2.5. In-house printing
In-house print production increased to 11.2 million pages (A4 equivalent) from 10.8 million pages in 2017. A total of EUR 325 033 (compared to EUR 223 768 in 2017) was recovered for internally printed jobs carried out under the price schedule approved by the Management Committee at the end of 2016. A systematic comparison of price estimates based on external contracts and internal print shops allowed author services to choose the most competitive option for each print request.
There was a clear trend towards internalizing the printing of short runs, which gives a faster turnaround time and eliminates the administrative burden inherent in outsourcing. In-house printing was also a big help when dealing with very urgent requests especially those from the Commission Spokesperson’s Service and Directorate-General for Communication related to high-level political events.
Meetings were held to discuss further synergies of print assets. This resulted in the signing of three service agreements with the European Parliament, the Council, and the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Committee of the Regions. Furthermore, the Office took over the OIL print shop and integrated its staff and machinery.
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2.6. Standards and cooperative production tools
The functional analysis was completed for the new production workflow manager for general publications that will replace the current system in order to cover new services and formats and be compliant with the general infrastructure in the Office.
The Office designed and is currently developing new templates to provide authors (via Eurolook for the Commission) with a simple tool to structure documents at source. This simplifies and speeds up the production process and the provision of datasets, and enables the production of accessible publications for visually impaired readers.
2.7. Digitisation
The Office assisted Commission’s Historical Archives Service in the continuous digitisation of the historical collections of COM, SEC, S and G documents (Commission legislative proposals, internal documents, published reports, written procedures, etc.). This type of collaboration was extended to other institutions, for example the Office assisted the Council in the digitisation of a part of their historical document collections.
3. Editorial services
3.1. Language editing of publications
The language-editing services of the Office were reorganised into a single unit, while production coordination aspects (i.e. the coordination of editing services and related contracts, the management of incoming requests for services, and the management of IT tools for production) were centralised in a horizontal unit, which is also in charge of projects related to Domain Leadership activities. The coordination team for language-editing services processed more than 150 000 requests for internal correction and 92 order forms for outsourced services.
The total number of standard pages processed and corrected amounted to 2 005 113 pages (2 568 553 pages in 2017) showing an overall decrease of 21 %. This drop is mainly due to the 38 % decrease in the number of standard pages corrected for case-law, reflecting the completion of the backlog of case-law files before the switch to document-by-document processing. In addition, the summaries and information on decisions were no longer corrected as from the second semester of 2018 as agreed with the Court of Justice.
The number of pages corrected for the Official Journal decreased by 14.5 %, and for general publications by 4.6 %. For the Official Journal the decrease is due to content not needing to undergo correction (e.g. long tables). For general publications the slight decrease is due to a shift towards more visual communication (i.e. less text).
Although the overall number of standard pages corrected decreased, the workload for copy-editing tasks in English remained consistently high. Copy-editing represents 31 % of the total number of pages processed for the English language. Copy-edited pages in English represent 91 % of the total number of copy-edited pages for all languages. In order to remain at an acceptable level of workload for this team, some of the documents to be corrected were outsourced.
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A new outsourcing strategy was set out in order to dedicate internal resources to new services with a higher added-value for authors as proposed as part of the Domain Leadership Publications and under Strategic objective 3. For the Official Journal, some correction tasks will be outsourced under the new production framework contract due to come into force in 2019. Possibilities for outsourcing correction of general publications were analysed and a low-value contract was launched in July 2018 for English, in order to assess the quality of outsourced language-editing services. The quality proved to be satisfactory and a new call for tender was launched in December 2018 for English. Outsourcing will be extended to other languages in 2019.
3.2. Interinstitutional style guide
On average, 2 851 unique visitors consulted the Interinstitutional style guide (15) daily, which represents 1 040 510 unique visitors per year. The demand for the 2011 edition of the paper version remained significant, at around 1 900 copies. A new paper version is under preparation.
The Office developed a proof of concept for the modernisation of the production system of the Interinstitutional style guide in order to promote data-management synergies and the generation of reusable-downloadable elements in human and machine-readable formats. The new production system makes use of structured formats and allows single-source publishing, i.e. the same source content can be used across different forms of media and more than once.
3.3. Survey services
The Office conducted 49 online surveys (– 4 %) in order to set up print runs for specific publications, gather feedback from stakeholders (mainly on the Office’s websites) or identify new subscribers for newsletters and mailing lists.
In addition, 61 bulk emails (– 30 %) were sent to invite participants to answer surveys or to disseminate newsletters or notifications.
4. Interinstitutional systems, workflows and platforms
4.1. Interinstitutional electronic workflows for decision-making
The Common Integrated Budget Application (CIBA), the interinstitutional tool used for the production of the EU budget, was adapted to ensure the exchange of translations of budgetary amendments by the European Parliament system.
4.2. Systems for sending procurement notices
The Office successfully implemented simplified versions of the forms for procurement in the transport domain in all TED related applications.
The number of eSenders (16) reached 160. At the annual TED eSenders seminar (expanded to over one and a half days to cover the wide range of subjects), participants took part in workshops and provided valuable feedback on planned changes. (15) http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-000100.htm (16) http://simap.ted.europa.eu/web/simap/list-of-ted-esenders
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4.3. eTendering platform
The eTendering (eAccess) platform (17) underwent a major technical upgrade and was migrated to a new corporate operating system. The Office worked on a project to interface the Procurement Planning and Management Tool managed by the Joint Research Centre with eTendering in order to enable automatic data transfer between the two applications which are part of the Commission’s corporate eProcurement platform.
The Office also engaged with the owners and developers of the Commission’s corporate Funding and Tender Opportunities Portal in delivering new services for the better integration between the two systems.
A usability study of eTendering provided valuable input for the continued development of new and better functionalities in the system.
4.4. Management of interinstitutional workflows for studies
Some 645 new studies were registered in the Interinstitutional Database of EU Studies, and the number of users consulting the database rose from 930 to 1 440. Several new improvements were introduced to ensure the increased usability of the database.
II. Access and reuse
1. Online services
1.1. EUR-Lex — Access to legal information
The revamp of the EUR-Lex navigation was completed: it offers a simplified look, optimised for mobile devices, while features and functionalities remain unchanged.
The display of interinstitutional procedures was also redesigned to facilitate the understanding and traceability of all the different stages leading to the adoption of a legal act (‘Proposal’, ‘Opinions’, ‘First reading’, ‘Adoption’, etc.), each enriched with more detailed information.
Additional developments focused on different parts of the site, e.g. the statistics page now provides a monthly overview on legal acts from different perspectives and with a more detailed breakdown of type of acts; the national transposition measures’ titles can now be translated using the machine translation tool developed by the Commission; and new types of documents are available on EUR-Lex (e.g. opinions from the European Parliament committees and from the European Central Bank on draft national legislation).
The text of national transposition measures from Greece, Cyprus and Austria was added making a total of eight countries for which it is possible to directly access the measures via EUR-Lex (Estonia, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Austria and Slovenia). (17) https://etendering.ted.europa.eu/general/page.html?name=home
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An e-learning module has been available on the EUR-Lex home page since March 2018. The module and the online tutorial adaptations to the new design have started and are planned to be finalised in 2019.
The Office contributed to the two meetings of the Council’s Working Party on e-Law, presenting its projects related to the dissemination of legal information, standardisation activities, open data and reuse of information. It also participated in the meetings of the Council’s e-Justice Working Party. Together with an ad-hoc expert group, the Working Party was responsible for negotiating and proposing a new strategy on European e-Justice and a new e-Justice action plan for 2019-2023. The Office proposed several actions and improvements which were included into the documents. In December 2018 these were approved by the Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper) and subsequently by the Council.
The Office enhanced the role of N-Lex (18) as a single entry point to national legislation websites in the EU Member States and thus contributed to the increasing importance of cross-border legal orders. An online guide for new visitors was published on the N-Lex homepage, and a survey was launched among Member States to identify possible areas of improvements. One of the main findings of the survey was to detect available translations of national legislation for a possible enrichment of N-Lex.
1.2. OP Portal — Access to the collections managed by the Office
The performance and stability of the OP Portal platform and OP Portal Search service were enhanced. Additionally, the EU Vocabularies and EU Whoiswho content were integrated into the OP Portal allowing users to perform searches across more collections in a multilingual set-up.
The Office made a significant effort to improve widgets with new features while reaching out to Commission directorates-general and EU institutions to present, demonstrate and propose the use of widgets in their specific environments. A specific brochure describing the business benefits of using widgets was published, and a section on the OP Portal webtools supported clients with the most relevant information about creating and using a widget.
The Office commissioned a landscaping exercise study on the cross-institutional search to investigate the feasibility of a service to end-users, a one-stop shop for the public, in which one can find content of different EU institutions, agencies and bodies published in different data sources (public registries, websites, repositories) and access them in a consistent manner.
Several event-related or editorial sites were launched, such as ‘Superpowers of procurement data’, ‘TED eSenders Seminar 2018’, ‘The Future of Publishing’, in addition to the already existing sites which were maintained. The Office produced a proof of concept for a new site ordered by the Court of Justice, ‘Comité 255’, to go live at the beginning of 2019. In addition, 30 new HTML publications were deployed on the portal.
(18) http://eur-lex.europa.eu/n-lex/index_en
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The ‘EU Bookshop’ brand name was phased-out; therefore the ‘EU Bookshop’ tab in the portal was renamed ‘EU Publications’. Following a user survey, the e-commerce module and ordering of printed publications as well as the sign-in and registration module were reviewed and updated in order to improve their usability and render the ordering process seamless from a user perspective. The Office made big improvements to the display of corporate authors in the publication’s detail page, search pages, results pages and widgets.
The number of publications downloaded (PDFs and e-books) increased by nearly 50 %. This growth can be attributed to a robust increase in the number of visitors to the OP Portal — EU Publications from 2 million in the previous year to 2.5 million. The portal’s ‘privileged user’ facility accounted for more than 81 % of all copies ordered. The Office produced monthly and ad-hoc detailed statistical reports about the publications requested online and the feedback received from users, and these were forwarded to the author services to help them in formulating and implementing their communication activities.
The print-on-demand service provided professional quality paper versions of out-of-stock or digital-only publications, helping author services to optimise print runs despite budgetary constraints while continuing to offer the public the option to obtain paper copies of the most popular publications.
With a view to a potential outsourcing of the OP Portal’s operations to a Managed Services Provider, a call for tender was launched. This transition will support the OP Portal activities by ensuring smooth access to content and metadata while implementing new features and functionalities needed by users and stakeholders.
1.3. TED — Access to public procurement information
More than 43 million notices were viewed on the TED website (19) and approximately 11 000 new public procurement notices were published per week in five daily editions in the 24 official EU languages. The total value of the procurement published represents over EUR 460 billion a year. Since December 2018, following a consultation with the EU institutions, the Office has made available yearly reports (starting from 2016) on contracts awarded by the EU institutions.
The Office successfully managed the call for tender procedure for a new TED dissemination contract to ensure continuity after the expiry of the current contract in March 2019.
To intensify the information exchange and cooperation, in May 2018 the Office organised a conference on ‘Superpowers of procurement data’ in Brussels to meet national procurement data publishers, policy decision-makers and other interested counterparts. The event celebrated the 20th anniversary of TED and was sponsored by the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council.
(19) TED: Tenders Electronic Daily (http://ted.europa.eu/TED/main/HomePage.do).
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1.4. CORDIS — Access to research results information
A new CORDIS (20) website was launched. Based on a user experience study, the new website makes it easier to view, browse and search for relevant information using a modern and mobile-responsive user interface.
In parallel, the CORDIS print/PDF publications were revamped for the regular Research*eu magazine, posted 10 times per year to over 4 400 subscribers worldwide. An outreach campaign sent thousands of copies of Research*eu to targeted stakeholders, including chambers of commerce, local and regional representations and EU institutions. CORDIS launched or updated 12 Results Packs (produced for Commission services), covering topics such as cybersecurity, precision farming, food systems, building renovation, water technologies, cultural heritage, organoids, nanomedicine, antibiotic resistance and bio-based innovation. CORDIS science writers and journalists published over 1 700 articles online highlighting the results of EU-funded research and innovation projects, aimed at professionals in the field and available in Spanish, German, English, French, Italian and Polish. CORDIS remained very active on social media, mainly through its 26 000+ Twitter followers but also making use of existing and new channels.
The CORDIS data repository grew with the steady online publication of new and updated information about Horizon 2020 (21) and previous framework programmes projects, reports, deliverables and publications, as submitted by beneficiaries to the Commission and providing transparent access to this public information.
CORDIS contributed to the Office’s linked open data strategy and established a specific linked open data approach and data curation plan for its own content. A data archiving and preservation plan sets out how older information will be managed.
The new CORDIS framework contract started in early 2018. This proved reliable with an overall website availability above the target of 99 % and the implementation of comprehensive test management and monitoring systems. Improved search engine optimisation techniques supported an increase in website visits.
The Office coordinated CORDIS activities with the Common Support Centre as well as with other Commission stakeholders through the relaunched dissemination and exploitation network and with research and innovation (R&I) communication units. The Office participated in the Strategic Directors Group preparing Horizon Europe, the next R&I framework programme, where the Office can provide services to maximise its impact.
1.5. EU Open Data Portal — Access to EU institutions’ reusable data
The Office supports the EU institutions to publish on the EU Open Data Portal and to increase the quantity and quality of the available datasets. The publishing of datasets continued to grow and the portal provided access to 12 912 datasets stemming from 72 data providers: the European Parliament, Council, European
(20) CORDIS: the Community Research and Development Information Service. Under the multiannual
financial framework for 2014-2020, CORDIS is financed within Horizon 2020 on a budget line co-delegated by the DG Research and Innovation (http://cordis.europa.eu).
(21) https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en
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External Action Service, European Economic and Social Committee, European Committee of the Regions, European Central Bank, European Court of Auditors, European Investment Bank, European Ombudsman, European Data Protection Supervisor, 33 Commission services, with DG Statistics as the most significant data provider, and 31 EU agencies and other bodies. The Court of Justice also expressed its interest in publishing datasets on the portal.
The features of the portal were improved, in particular its capabilities to discover and visualise datasets. The metadata standard recommended for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP) was implemented. This will enhance interoperability with the European Data Portal and allow it to show semantic links between data. The project to publish the EU budget as linked open data was finished and presented during a public webinar. It was also promoted at specialised conferences, where it raised interest, and a short summary video was prepared.
The Office organised the second EU Datathon competition on the reuse of data from the EU Open Data Portal in collaboration with the ELI Taskforce, the European Food Safety Authority and three Commission directorates-general (DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs; DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology; and DG Informatics). The competition challenged teams to create applications addressing specific policy or societal issues related to innovation, legal data, public procurement data, or food data. The outreach of the event was very successful, with enterprises, start-ups, individuals and students from all over Europe, and the results provided invaluable insights on what can be achieved through the reuse of open data.
The management of the European Data Portal, publishing 880 000 datasets from 78 data catalogues from European countries, was transferred from the Commission’s DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology to the Office on 1 August 2018. Bringing the two portals together allows for operational synergies and a more comprehensive and contextualised offer of data and data services to (re)users. This is also in line with the need for further web rationalisation within the Commission and the other EU institutions, and builds on the Office’s interinstitutional role.
1.6. Web analytics
In line with Strategic objective 6 — Reference centre for the production of publications, the Office set up a service to provide web analytics information related to the consultation of the publications in the OP Portal, i.e. the dashboard on web analytics. The tool proposes easy access to the main indicators related to the consultation of the publications and the consultation context (visits, page views, languages used, downloads, geography, searched terms used, etc.). The data can be filtered easily and accommodate different analytical needs: global consultation, selection of publications of one/multiple institution(s), top consulted topics of interest and related publications, and top consulted publications based on the country of origin of the visits.
The proof of concept of the tool was presented to different EU institutions and agencies in order to gather feedback. The dashboard is expected to be operational and gradually opened to the EU institutions, agencies and bodies during 2019.
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The Office’s also fulfilled its role as leader of the Web Analytics Working Group while being nominated leader of a new Working Group on EU repositories as part of the agreed future priorities of the Interinstitutional Online Communication Committee.
2. Distribution management
2.1. Distribution and storage
The number of paper copies distributed reached 8.28 million, compared to 9.26 million in 2017, marking a decrease of 10.6 %. The overall long-term trend towards the distribution of fewer printed copies of publications persisted, with 65.3 % fewer copies distributed when compared to 2010 (35.70 million).
The overall figures for initial print runs ordered by author services remains stable. While waiting for an IT-supported mailing lists system, the lists had to be managed manually and did not allow for more realistic print runs, e.g. via better targeted dissemination and lower number of returns. The Commission’s DG Communication initiated a pilot project destined to produce factsheets on demand. If successful, it will open a new printing process for author services to produce selected titles without any print-run excess.
The destocking of older titles and lower print runs meant that the number of copies held in stock at the end of 2018 counted 12.4 million, an increase of 0.5 % compared to 2017. The long-term downward trend in the volume of stock remains at – 65 % in comparison to 2010.
2.2. Administration and reporting of costs related to distribution
Logistics are fully outsourced under a single service provider. A structure of fees based on the principle of full recovery of costs is applied for all outsourced logistics. Detailed monthly billing statements of the distribution and storage costs incurred are sent to each author service. Logistics costs can also be monitored in real time by the author services concerned in the online Integrated Logistics Management System (ILMS) application. A dedicated team handles all questions about billed transactions, provides quotes for possible future distribution services and assists author services in the verification of the individual amounts invoiced. The team provides guidelines, advice, examples and specific information sessions as necessary.
3. Promotion, mailing lists and helpdesk
3.1. Promotion of EU content and services of the Office
Promotional activities focused on specialist audiences, in particular national administrations, professional reusers and multipliers.
In May, a seminar on ‘Public Procurement Data for EU Businesses and Policies’ was organised in cooperation with the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU. The Office organised two major events in October: the conference ‘The Future of Publishing’, which brought together EU institutions’ leaders and technology experts from the information management and publications domains; and the second EU Datathon competition on the reuse of data from the EU Open Data Portal.
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The Office took part in a wide range of internal and external events, to promote its services and provide information to the EU institutions and the general public. These include the Open Door Days in Luxembourg and Brussels in May, the Semantic Interoperability conference in Brussels in June, the international standard book number (ISBN) conference in Malta in September, the ‘Law via the Internet’ conference in Florence in October, the EU institutions IT forum (DIGITEC) and the European Public Communication Conference (EuropCom) 2018 in Brussels in November.
A range of new promotional material (brochures, leaflets, roll-up banners and videos) was produced. Some of the Office’s activities and services (e.g. the EUR-Lex website, digital preservation and the EU Datathon competition) were presented in articles published in the Commission’s intranet. Two issues of Key publications of the European Union were published in 2018 (spring and autumn) and three promotional videos were produced and distributed via YouTube and other channels.
The Office’s Newsletter maintained a stable circulation of 30 000 recipients. It contains an editorial section focusing on a current political theme and a selection of recent publications, applications and datasets. In order to enhance its responsive design on mobile devices, a redesign of the newsletter was launched and will be implemented in early 2019.
From all the Office’s profiles on social media, its Facebook page had the largest following, growing to almost 125 000 at the end of 2018. Growth for the LinkedIn page improved by 22 %, bringing the number of followers to over 3 800. More frequent video postings on YouTube contributed to follower growth of 41 % for the Office’s profile and 32 % for the CORDIS profile. Regarding Twitter, the combined number of followers for the Office’s profiles was almost 87 000, an increase of 20 %.
3.2. Mailing list management
The decline in the number of records (postal addresses) which started in 2015 continued. This was due to the capacity of the ILMS to import mailing addresses managed by the author services directly, and to a strong decline of the dissemination of paper publications which resulted in the deletion of several distribution lists.
Existing mailing lists were verified and updated. An action plan was drafted in order to implement Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 (22).
The new customer relation management system based on the Odoo platform was thoroughly customised and tested. The relevant mailing lists were successfully transferred to the new system.
3.3. Helpdesk and customer support
Information about publications and assistance related to the Office’s electronic products (mostly websites) were provided by an online helpdesk, which provided a first-level contact point. (22) Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2018 on
the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 and Decision No 1247/2002/EC (OJ L 295, 21.11.2018, p. 39).
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The number of requests fell by 6.5 %, to 20 206 (from 21 615 in 2017) and the thematic breakdown was as follows: public procurement: 69 %; legislation: 10 %; OP Portal (including EU Publications): 13 %; CORDIS: 5 %; and other services: 3 %.
III. Information management
1. Data, information and knowledge management
Data, information and knowledge are strategic assets. Under the Commission communication on ‘Data, information and knowledge management at the European Commission’ (23), the Office promoted the better gathering, sharing and use of information and knowledge among EU staff and among other EU institutions, agencies and bodies.
The Director-General of the Office, as a member of the Commission’s Information Management Steering Board (IMSB), contributed to the definition of the Commission Data Strategy @EC and is associated in the implementation of the related action plan, aimed at transforming the Commission in a data-driven organisation. The Office contributed to the IMSB bi-annual work programme 2018-2019 on actions related to data publishing on the EU Open Data Portal, data landscaping and inventory, the development of data visualisation capabilities, semantic interoperability, alignment of controlled vocabularies and services based upon unique and persistent identification.
2. Data protection
The Office took action to ensure compliance with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725. All notifications on data protection-relevant activities were reviewed and additional information was collected in preparation for the transfer of notifications to records within the Data Protection Management System in early 2019.
3. Harmonisation of metadata and formats
3.1. Standardisation of metadata
Under the guidance of the Interinstitutional Metadata and Formats Committee, the IMMC exchange protocol (for automated transmission of metadata and documents between and within the EU institutions) was extended to cover use by all the remaining EU institutions involved in the interinstitutional decision-making process (European Court of Auditors, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Committee of the Regions and the European Central Bank). New versions of the protocol and the associated authority tables were published on the new EU Vocabularies website. Within the Office, with the migration of the legacy publishing chain for consolidated acts to an IMMC-based publishing chain, all publishing chains are now based on IMMC-based workflows.
The Metadata Registry and EuroVoc websites were replaced by the new common EU Vocabularies website. The Office published seven new authority tables on the EU Vocabularies website, bringing the total to 80. (23) C(2016) 6626 final.
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In the context of the interinstitutional policy on URIs, 23 implementations providing a persistent URI under the data.europa.eu subdomain are available. Amongst others, public procurement related resources such as the Common Procurement Vocabulary were added to the existing implementations.
3.2. Interoperability of document formats
The Common Vocabulary version 2 was released. Its scope was extended to gather common structural and semantic concepts of example documents of the types ‘regulation’, ‘directive’, ‘decision’ as well as ‘proposal for a regulation’, ‘proposal for a directive’, ‘proposal for a decision’. This extended version served as a baseline for the preparation of the Common Exchange Model version 2, adopted by the IMFC in November 2018, which will help the institutions to exchange documents as part of the legislative process. First transmissions based on the Common Exchange Model version 2 are expected for beginning of 2019.
3.3. Management of controlled vocabularies
Two new versions of the multilingual thesaurus EuroVoc were published, bringing the total number of multilingual concepts covering EU policies and activities to 7 193.
In order to reinforce interoperability and avoid duplication of efforts in the domain of controlled vocabulary maintenance and dissemination, work continued on the alignment of the controlled vocabularies of the EU institutions with EuroVoc. In parallel, following the call to set up an inventory for controlled vocabularies used in the Commission in the context of 2018-2019 IMSB work programme, the Office organised a workshop with 40 vocabulary managers in the Commission and produced an updated report with the outcomes of the workshop and overall action progress.
4. Indexation and associated services
4.1. Assignment of identifiers including the international numbers
In total, 36 521 publications (all linguistic versions and formats included) were identified with a catalogue number compared to 27 671 in 2017. This is in line with the continuing trend to identify more and more content with the Office. Additionally, some 8 748 catalogue numbers were assigned to files in PDF format, produced purely for archival purposes. This was a new activity started in 2018 and intended to ensure the production of high-quality files for long-term preservation purposes.
The above figure includes 26 399 publications identified as monographs (receiving an ISBN) compared to 17 106 in 2017, 1 260 publications identified as periodicals (receiving an international standard serial number (ISSN)) compared to 1 509 in 2017 and 6 055 publications identified as monographs in collection (receiving both an ISBN and an ISSN) compared with 5 695 in 2017.
Furthermore, 547 publications were identified as scientific or technical reports of the European Commission and therefore were included in the Scientific and Technical Reports series, receiving an EUR number, compared to 609 in 2017.
In its activities as an official registration agency for the DOI, the Office registered 37 735 DOIs compared to 20 535 in 2017. The significant increase is principally
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explained by a project with the Commission’s Historical Archives to use the DOI to identify digitised content.
The Office further developed its cooperation with other DOI registration agencies to ensure access to advanced DOI services for its client base. In addition to its existing partnership with Crossref (24), the Office entered into a new partnership with DataCite to share the metadata of duly identified EU datasets and improve their citation in the wider publishing world.
4.2. Production and dissemination of bibliographic records
The Office created 26 225 records enabling their corresponding publications to be made available online. These records contained standardised descriptive metadata as well as EuroVoc indexation terms and a DOI-based persistent link to the publication content, contributing to the improved discoverability of the publications on the web.
A wider visibility of EU general publications was promoted through the dissemination of the Office’s bibliographic records to external audiences, in particular through its Online Public Access Catalogue (OPac), which provides advanced search functionalities and permits the download of records into local catalogues. The service was especially appreciated by librarians and other information professionals as it facilitated the inclusion of EU publications within established collections.
The Office also offered customised exports to an established list of clients, both commercial and non-commercial; 337 094 new or modified records were exported. Cooperation with content dissemination platforms enabled the Office to reach even larger audiences whilst reducing the number of individual partners.
4.3. Legal analysis of documents published on EUR-Lex
The number of enriched notices uploaded into EUR-Lex totalled 24 191. Additionally, some 160 new national judgments were received and treated as part of the jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement of judgements collection (JURE), containing the case-law delivered by the national courts and the European Court of Justice relating to the 2007 Lugano Convention (25).
4.4. Production, reception and validation of metadata and content
The Office put five additional reception and validation chains based on the IMMC exchange protocol into production. The new chains support supplementary publishing flows for pre-legislative and internal decision-making documents, summaries of legislation, consolidated acts and Merger Taskforce decisions for publication on EUR-Lex.
On average the authentic version of the Official Journal was published within approximately 15 minutes of the reception of the electronic signature.
(24) Crossref is an official DOI registration agency of the International DOI Foundation. (25) http://eur-lex.europa.eu/collection/n-law/jure.html
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5. Management of the common repository (Cellar)
By the end of 2018, the Cellar contained more than 133 million files, an increase of 0.2 % compared to the end of 2017. The predominant file formats are XML (Formex), HTML and PDF. The metadata itself is represented in the standard format of the semantic web (i.e. RDF — resource description framework) as triples (26). The metadata part of the Cellar contains more than 1 714 million triples.
The quality of the content and metadata stored in the Cellar was constantly checked and improved where necessary. The data curation team corrected all errors signalled by internal and external stakeholders and worked on the improvement of historic data.
There was a further increase in requests for data from the Cellar. On average there were 11.6 million requests per day, corresponding to more than 134 queries per second. About 3.4 % of all requests came directly from the web, while the remainder passed through one of the Office’s public websites, in particular EUR-Lex.
The Cellar migration to the cloud started in 2017 and should be finalised in 2019.
6. Long-term preservation
6.1. Digital archiving of publications
A digital preservation plan was drawn up to define the Office’s vision and strategy on long-term digital preservation, and it was revised following the input from the EU institutions. The final version was presented to and adopted by the Management Committee.
The remaining collections to be migrated to the new long-term preservation repository EUDOR V3 (27) will be handled one by one in order of priority. The formal validation of the migration is ongoing.
Some 42 000 new resources (works) were archived. A work comprises all linguistics versions and all available digital formats. By the end of 2018, the electronic archive contained 762 368 works (corresponding to 96 529 811 individual files). The total volume of the archive amounts to 70 terabytes. The increase compared to 2017 is explained by the addition of new collections and the ever-expanding nature of the content.
6.2. Web preservation
The Office became fully responsible for the web preservation service offered to the EU institutions. This service ensures long-term preservation of, and continuous access to, the content of the EU institutions’ main websites. The basic service consists of quarterly archiving of websites in the europa.eu domain and its subdomains. In addition to this, at the request of several institutions, tailor-made crawls were carried out of websites that were to be taken offline, or were going to change substantially.
(26) A triple is a data entity composed of subject-predicate-object. (27) EUDOR: European Union Document Repository, the long-term digital archive of the EU
institutions managed by the Office.
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The archived versions of the europa.eu websites were made available to the public. The first tests to store the material in EUDOR were performed successfully.
6.3. Conversion into formats suitable for long-term preservation
A project to convert the historic SGML format collection of legal texts into an XML format was launched. The SGML version is no longer suitable for long-term preservation because the underlying character set became obsolete.
7. Copyright
7.1. Copyright advice
The Office organised 19 training sessions and customised presentations on copyright matters, of which 14 were delivered to EU agencies. Also, a total of 470 copyright files were opened. These facilitated the reuse (reproduction, translation, communication to the public) of EU documents by citizens, companies and public bodies and provided the author services with advice on copyright in their editorial projects.
7.2. Editorial partnership and co-publishing
Seven co-publishing projects were initiated, of which two were finalised; six projects are pending, including one from 2017. No editorial partnership projects were initiated.
IV. Preparatory action, pilot projects and ISA² activities
1. Preparatory action ‘Linked open data in European public administration’
This preparatory action supports Strategic objective 4 — Linked EU information, increased interoperability and federated search’ and Strategic objective 10 — Central point for access and reuse.
The Office started a study on the data integration potential via linked open data on a cloud environment. It should provide a basis on which European and national public administrations can build their cloud-ready linked open data strategies as well as scenarios for how the EU institutions can improve their services or create new innovative services via linked open data. First results were presented at a workshop in December. The Office also worked on identifying ways to improve user experience and publication findability on the OP Portal via the use of linked open data and setting out how the proof of concept of linked open data and data services could be extended and applied to other open data generated by European public administrations, expanding potential exploitation.
The EU Open Data Portal integrated the DOI, which allows users to cite the datasets they use and also enables the data providers to see who used their datasets.
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2. Pilot projects
2.1. PublicAccess.eu
The PublicAccess.eu pilot project (28) was finalised, including the enrichment of EUR-Lex with new documents and a report on the design of an aggregator tool to provide a cross-institutional search service for EU content. A final report was prepared and disseminated to the different stakeholders.
2.2. Reading disability and document access, a possible approach
Under Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies (29), the pilot project aims to improve the accessibility of Commission’s and EU institutions’ documents for people with reading disabilities. The Office will assess the current technologies available (such as typefaces) and decide which documents should be made available with the utmost priority; it will also lay out a roadmap for a ‘reading disorder friendly’ environment for the EU institutions. Finally, the most recent official documents will be converted into an appropriate format and/or typeface.
3. ISA² activities
Six actions were financed by the Commission’s ISA² programme and the Office managed the relevant activities as action owner.
3.1. European Legislation Identifier
ELIs were assigned to EU secondary legislation, corrigenda and consolidated texts. The ELI registry (30) on EUR-Lex was updated to provide a centralised access to the specifications of the ELI identifier system as well as to information about implementation by the national ELI coordinators. A total of 13 legislation publishers (31) had implemented ELI in their national systems by the end of 2018.
The main achievements were the release of a new ELI ontology and the publication on Joinup (32) of an open source tool to annotate legislation in compliance with the ELI standard. The Office also worked on a project to integrate ELI subdivisions in the daily legislation production workflow.
The Office organised four meetings with the stakeholder group that governs the ELI initiative and contributed to two ELI expert group meetings hosted by the Council. Three ELI workshops were organised to provide hands-on support to Member States interested in implementing the ELI standard in their legislation publishing systems.
(28) https://publications.europa.eu/en/web/public-access (29) OJ L 327, 2.12.2016, p. 1. (30) http://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli-register/about.html (31) Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain,
the United Kingdom and the Office. (32) Joinup is a collaborative platform created by the European Commission to share and reuse
Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/).
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3.2. Standardisation of public procurement data
The Office is in charge of the development of the public procurement ontology which is an integral part of the ‘European public procurement interoperability initiative’ action of the ISA and ISA² programme. The ontology, a joint action with DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs and DG Informatics, will cover the complete public procurement lifecycle.
The elements related to eNotification and eAccess are close to completion and the alignment with eForms is ongoing. The necessary code-lists for eForms are currently under discussion with DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs; once agreed they will be published on the EU Vocabularies website.
3.3. Semantic interoperability for European public administration
A major new version of the open source thesaurus management tool VocBench (33) was released in September. This offers the EU institutions and national administrations a toolbox to create, maintain, link and publish their controlled vocabularies, metadata or glossaries as linked open data.
Corporate access via the TESTA network (34) to VocBench was provided to interested services of the EU institutions. Of those services, seven already make use of this corporate access and maintain their vocabularies in VocBench.
3.4. Development of an open data service
The integration of the beta-version of the EU data visualisation catalogue into the EU Open Data Portal was completed and further improvements are in preparation. The catalogue is a service package that provides support related to the use of data visualisation and data visualisation tools. The action will put more focus on strengthening data visualisation community via trainings, webinars and a data visualisation conference in 2019.
3.5. Public multilingual knowledge management infrastructure for digital
single market
The objective of this action is to support enterprises and in particular the language technology industry with the implementation of the necessary multilingual tools and features in order to improve cross-border accessibility of e-commerce solutions.
The semi-automatic alignment between different types of thesauri was developed and successfully tested. The development of the backend layer based on VocBench progressed, the functional requirement of the dissemination layer was prepared and the development of the first phase of an operational prototype was launched.
(33) Open source production tool identified as the corporate solution for production of controlled
vocabularies (http://vocbench.uniroma2.it). (34) Trans European Services for Telematics between Administrations provides a European backbone
network for data exchange between a wide variety of public administrations (https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/solutions/testa_en).
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The use of VocBench for the implementation of the public multilingual knowledge management infrastructure (PMKI) platform is a fine example for synergies between different ISA² actions.
3.6. Digital management of the ordinary legislative procedure
This action is related to the definition of common standards for the exchange of information within the scope of the EU legislative process, in particular for the structuring of the documents exchanged. In particular, it supports the elaboration of Common Exchange Model, i.e. the specifications needed for the implementation of the future document exchange formats between the different actors of the process. This will allow interested third parties and reusers transparent access to public information. The baseline version of the Common Exchange Model was adopted in March 2018 and version 2 in November 2018. This action supports the IMFC work.
C. Management
I. Human resources
1. Staff
The Office’s establishment plan was reduced to 567 posts by the end of 2018 (– 3 as staff reduction, – 9 as transfers to DG Human Resources and Security, – 14 to DG Informatics, – 2 to OIL). The overall decrease of 16.5 % from 2012 is also due to the staff reduction of 5 % over 5 years that applies to all institutions (– 34 posts since 2013) and to redeployment measures imposed by the Commission to serve other priorities (– 45 posts since 2012).
At the end of December, the Office employed 16 contract agents and 10 temporary agents; three contracts came to an end.
Some 53.8 % of all officials in the Office were women. Among administrator (AD) category officials 37.1 % were women, in the assistant (AST) category 58.6 % and in the secretary/clerk (SC) category 100 %. At year end, women held 25.0 % of occupied senior management posts and 53.3 % of middle management posts.
2. Training
Priorities focused on the development of technical expertise in information and communications technology relating to the production, storage, dissemination and reuse of documents and publications. This reflects the technological evolution and changing concepts in the information management and publishing domains. The overall number of formal training hours adds up to 13 838.
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II. Budget
1. Budgetary accounts
The overall budget managed by the Office amounted to EUR 119.19 million, compared with EUR 121.70 million in 2017.
In addition to the resources delegated to the Director-General of the Office from the Commission’s budget, the Office called on the financial resources of the institutions for the payment of publications for which it gives technical approval (EUR 5.68 million).
The Office issued 414 recovery orders for a total of EUR 6.14 million. The recovered amounts are entered into the budget as assigned revenue under the corresponding budget headings. The recovery orders primarily concerned expenses related to the cost of the Official Journal and summaries of EU legislation and expenses incurred on behalf of third parties, in particular for the production, storage and dissemination costs of the EU institutions’ publications.
2. Commercial accounts
2.1. Balance sheet
Commercial sales are carried out on a cash basis. Thus the receivable account only amounts to EUR 923.77.
2.2. Sales revenue
Sales revenue collected amounted to EUR 39 407.88, compared to EUR 38 172.43 in 2017, while net sales invoiced increased from EUR 38 465.36 to EUR 39 988.91.
III. Procurement and contract management
The Office finalised 30 tender procedures, including one interinstitutional procedure involving the European Parliament and the Court of Justice, as follows: 22 procedures concluded with the signature of new contracts or amendments to existing contracts; three procedures on the increase of the amount of existing contracts; and five procedures concluded without awarding a contract.
Significant efforts were made to prepare complex procurement requirements including a procedure for competitive dialogue and two interinstitutional calls for tenders involving the Council of the European Union, the Court of Justice, the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Committee of the Regions, due be finalised in 2019.
Finally, on 22 June 2018 the General Court dismissed the application in case T-211/17 (35).
(35) Case T-211/17, Judgment of the General Court (Seventh Chamber) of 28 June 2018, Amplexor
Luxembourg Sàrl v European Commission.
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Throughout the year the Office managed 250 own contracts in total and used 25 framework contracts of other Commission directorates-general. As regards contract execution, the Office signed 47 amendments and revised the prices based on contractors’ requests in 28 cases. Seven contracts were terminated.
Internally, 109 legal questions related to contract execution were treated and answered. Some 14 files on legal issues linked to EU mobile applications were treated. Finally, the Office dealt with a request from the Ombudsman on a complaint from a Polish citizen, which also involved the Commission Representation in Poland.
Following a rationalisation process carried out in cooperation with all operational units, the Office reduced the number of its own contracts to 200. This represents a 12 % reduction compared to the end of 2017.
IV. Governance and enterprise architecture
A new governance structure was operational and ensured the follow-up of the Strategic objectives 2017-2025. Assessment exercises were conducted on the status of implementation of each strategic objective together with preliminary analysis and planning activities for future milestones. The Management Committee was provided with quarterly reports on various aspects related to the strategy implementation. Additionally, 22 project initiation requests and 11 requests for additional budget related to ongoing projects were evaluated and processed.
As regards enterprise architecture, the Office enforced the correctness and completeness of business process models in the ARIS software and ensured the technological compatibility of the 22 project initiation requests presented.
V. Infrastructure
1. Facilities management and supporting resources
1.1. Buildings
The lease contract of the Mercier building was extended until a future move to new premises, under control of OIL, and proposals for the new building were submitted to the budgetary authority for approval. In the meantime, the Fischer building was vacated and all staff was successfully rehoused in the Mercier building.
1.2. Safety and health
Although OIL has taken responsibility for control and preventive measures since 1 January 2014, the Director-General of the Office is still formally responsible for this domain under Commission Decision on health and safety at work (36), which has not yet been amended by the Commission — DG Human resources and Security.
(36) Commission Decision establishing a Harmonised Policy for Health and Safety at work for all
Commission staff (C(2006) 1623).
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1.3. Supporting resources
The number of PCs decreased from 868 at the end of 2017 to 708 at the end of 2018. In line with DG Informatics’ IT Infrastructure Consolidation guidelines, the number of corporate laptops has increased from 84 to 167. The migration of the Office’s desktops to Windows 10 was launched (37 % migrated).
The number of helpdesk calls increased at 14 449 (compared to 13 152 in 2017), following the transfer of IT staff to DG Informatics.
2. Document management
2.1. Physical archives
Incoming publications were duly recorded and archived on a daily basis. The Office started a project started to fill gaps in the general publications archive. The encoding of the historical OJ S in the archival management system (LogArch) is ongoing.
In a joint effort throughout the Office, administrative archives were as far as possible centralised in the Office’s archival spaces. This project will continue in 2019. In parallel, discussion started on a possible transfer of the Office’s archives to the Commission’s Historical Archive Service.
2.2. Document Management Officer
Quality control was carried out on a regular basis to check the respect of e-Domec rules. The Document Manager provided assistance regarding registration and archiving of administrative documents. This helped ensure the smooth transition of document management activities in the context of the Office’s reorganisation in April 2018 and the transfer of responsibilities for some activities between units or to OIL.
3. Information systems
3.1. Data centre, IT infrastructure consolidation and IT systems
In the framework of the IT infrastructure consolidation project, the IT infrastructure management was transferred on 1 January 2018 to DG Informatics; the take-over included the administrative transfer of officials and external staff. DG Informatics will continue to operate the existing IT infrastructure of the Office until its integration into the corporate IT infrastructure.
As the Office’s move to a new building was postponed for at least three years, the Office and DG Informatics reviewed and adjusted the data centre, network and workplace migration plans in order to reduce the transition associated risks. The consolidation is encountering delays, in particular due to the specificity of the information systems. The convergence towards the European Commission standard configuration will be progressively achieved during 2019-2020. The due diligence examination was delivered by DG Informatics in June 2018, two foundation systems were moved and the consolidation roadmap is being finalised. Three new information systems were successfully deployed directly into the corporate data centre, requiring an adaptation of processes on the Office’s side.
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The Office’s IT systems landscape is being reviewed, and the decommissioning of IT systems having become obsolete is ongoing.
In accordance the Office’s cloud-first policy, whereby the cloud should gradually become the default deployment model, the migration of four IT systems (EUR-Lex, Cellar, EUR-Lex Search and IMMCbuilder) to the cloud progressed. One system (IMMCbuilder) was deployed at the end of 2018. The roadmap for the Cellar was reviewed, in order to develop foundation services and adapt the storage system to become cloud-native. Additional investments have been required to ensure compliance with DG Informatics and public cloud requirements. The cloud cost forecast was fine-tuned at the end of 2018, and the opportunity to fully deploy the main systems in 2019 is still under consideration.
Further to the decision to extend its IT outsourcing strategy by adopting a Managed Services Provision approach, the Office published the call for tender for the OP Portal platform. The tender procedure was closed in December 2018, and the launch of the new service will take place during the second quarter of 2019.
On 1 August 2018 the Office expanded its portfolio of IT systems by taking over from the DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology the management of the European Data Portal, a major outlet of data from EU Member States and third countries. The Office will bring the portal together with the EU Open Data Portal in order to achieve operational synergies and better services for (re)users.
3.2. IT projects
IT projects development supported the delivering of business objectives, in particular for the implementation of the Strategic objectives 2017-2025. Among others, the eSeal application was developed for the authentication of the Official Journal with an electronic seal. A new IT system replacing Oracle Financials was also put into production; it will gradually integrate the functionalities of four other applications, with the aim of rationalising and reducing licence costs. The EU Open Data Portal was enriched with a new catalogue listing the visualisation tools, projects and events of the EU institutions. Additionally, a major release of the EU Open Data Portal was deployed, introducing the widely accepted standard for the open data community (DCAT-AP).
4. IT security
4.1. Firewall
Firewall rules were regularly amended in close cooperation with DG Informatics and the Office’s network team. In collaboration with DG Human Resources and Security, DG Informatics’ Computer Security Incident Response Capability Team (CSIRC) and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-EU), several security incidents related to users’ workstations and website vulnerabilities were successfully dealt with in a timely fashion. The Office’s penetration testing cycle on its websites reduced these vulnerabilities. Commission Decision (EU, Euratom) 2017/46 of 10 January
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2017 on the security of communication and information systems in the European Commission (37) was reviewed, and work started towards its implementation.
4.2. Business continuity planning
The latest versions of the Office’s business continuity plan and business impact analysis as well as relevant supporting documentation are available in the business continuity management tool (NOAH). The critical team compositions in the NOAH system were updated when changes occurred, e.g. in the context of the Office’s reorganisation in April 2018.
VI. Internal control environment
1. Internal control coordination
The Office took the necessary steps for the implementation of the new Commission internal control framework (38). The presence and functioning of all internal control components were assessed according to the new framework. This was based on, among others, the following: reports from authorising officers by subdelegation including financial data (follow-up of the consumption of budget and contract amounts) and the main points concerning controls and risks; quarterly reports to the Management Committee on the main indicators; financial control and audit reports; evaluation and procurement planning and monitoring; and specific analyses, including the review of important processes and procedures and their documentation.
2. Risk management
All budget items delegated by the Commission to the Director-General of the Office concern administrative expenses and/or contract management and are in direct management mode; therefore the inherent risk is low.
Risk management is conducted on a continuous basis. While the risk management methodology follows the guidance of the Commission, the risks refer to all the activities of the Office and their interinstitutional character.
The analysis of the physical distribution was finalised taking into account changes that have occurred in recent years. Several improvement opportunities for the preparation of future calls for tenders were identified.
The risk register was reviewed and updated. The reviews, together with the reports of authorising officers by subdelegation, confirmed that risks within the Office were managed appropriately.
3. Evaluation
The analysis of the budgetary impact of the changes in the Official Journal production was finalised. It showed that during the period 2009 to 2016 the total costs with the Official Journal production and the related infrastructure and IT decreased due to the (37) OJ L 6, 11.1.2017, p. 40. (38) Communication to the Commission ‘Revision of the internal control framework’ (C(2017) 2373).
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new production contract and the reduction in paper production since the shift to the authentic electronic Official Journal, but also to the general tendency of the market and the redesign of the contractual set-up. Although the IT costs increased due to growing digitalisation needs, this was overall offset by the significant reduction in the production costs.
At the request of the Management Committee, an analysis was carried out on the budgetary impact of the revision of the distribution and transport arrangement. The results showed that outsourcing resulted in an overall decrease of costs. Since it can be expected that the share of digital publications will increase and distribution of physical publications will further decrease, the complete outsourcing is a suitable solution. Additionally, the details provided to author services for storage and distribution expenses allow them to better control their distribution activities.
Two evaluations were started. The evaluation of the quality control activity in the Office addresses the functioning of the quality control processes, the needs of the author services, the quality of services delivered and the comparison of the internal and external services. The evaluation of the contracting arrangements for IT development and project management was initiated to support the decision on the future contracting arrangement for project management. The results will be presented in 2019.
4. Financial control
Five new ex-post control exercises were conducted (one on commitments and recovery orders and four on payments covering the period from 1 October 2017 to 30 September 2018). Five reports were finalised (one on commitments and recovery orders and four on payments covering the period 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018).
Concerning the finalised exercises, the four payment controls covered 443 files out of 3 775 (11.7 %), representing EUR 13.8 million out of a total of EUR 53.9 million (25.7 %). One commitment and recovery order ex-post control covered 241 transactions out of 813 (29.6 %) representing EUR 78.7 million out of EUR 125.2 million (62.9. %). Additionally, 5 credit transfers and 11 asset write-off proposal files were checked. All transactions with relevant errors were examined in detail and recommendations were formulated.
Financial control results show that there are no significant material risks (0.197 %) in financial payment operations and that the first-level operational and financial control is more than satisfactory and far below any obligation for declaration.
5. Audit and discharge observations and recommendations
The Commission’s Internal Audit Service (IAS) sampled the Office among the services where it conducted a multi-DG audit on intellectual property rights (IPR) supporting activities. The audit focused in particular on the effectiveness and the efficiency of the controls put in place to prevent and detect third-party IPR infringement in Commission publications. The final report will be available in 2019. Another audit, on IT governance and project management, was started by the IAS in December 2018 and is planned to be finalised by mid-2019.
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One audit recommendation of the 2016 IAS audit on business continuity and disaster recovery management at the Office is outstanding and is in the course of being implemented.
The Office is the lead service for two recommendations arising from the European Court of Auditors’ performance audit on access to the EU institutions’ public procurement (39) as well as for two additional recommendations originating from the European Parliament’s resolution on 2015 discharge. The recommendations refer to the creation of a one-stop shop for the EU institutions’ procurement activities and to the establishment of a single public repository for information related to procurement contracts in order to increase transparency.
Following the survey held with contracting authorities using eTendering and discussions with several Commission directorates-general and other EU institutions (European Parliament, Council, European Central Bank), since December 2018 reports with information on the contracts awarded by the EU institutions and bodies are available in TED on a daily basis. They provide useful data, including the entity awarding the contract, the winners, the subject matter and the values awarded, etc. The next steps include assigning identifiers to EU institutions and Commission directorates-general and creating dynamic pages to visualise the reports online. Additionally, a number of features will be added in eTendering, such as annual lists of contractors, ex-ante publicity of low value procedures, extended search, email notifications about updates to calls for tenders, etc.). Work on the listing functional and technical requirements for a common electronic one-stop shop is ongoing.
VII. Internal environmental management
1. Energy The Office continues to use ‘green energy’ within the framework of the interinstitutional contract that came into effect on 1 January 2011. Following the transfer of car management to OIL, under a pilot project for logistics synergies, carbon dioxide emissions are no longer the Office’s responsibility.
2. Waste management The Office kept the seventh SuperDrecksKëscht fir Betriber label (40) for its waste-sorting methods. An audit took place under the direction of OIL and looked in particular at the handling of organic waste.
3. Paper consumption Paper consumption, which mainly covers administrative needs (photocopying machines and laser printers), amounted to 4.5 tonnes, which represents a significant decrease compared to 2017 (10.6 tonnes), which can be explained by the removal of personal printers, the willingness of staff to reduce the use of paper for environmental reasons and the replacement of paper signatories by e-signature workflows. (39) Special Report No 17/2016: The EU institutions can do more to facilitate access to their public procurement. (40) The label SuperDrecksKëscht fir Betriber is a Luxemburgish recognised quality label granted to
businesses having adopted an environmentally friendly waste management plan.
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D. Internal communication and social dialogue As every year, staff were reminded of the rules in force regarding ethics and whistleblowing.
A significant reorganisation of the Office took effect in 2018, and a special effort was made to inform and consult all staff about this initiative. A call for expression of interest and a chambre d’écoute were launched in order to foster internal mobility and accompany the necessary changes in posting. Moreover, the Director-General organised regular open doors throughout the year, where any member of staff could meet him about any topic without a prior appointment.
Internal communication relied on the Office’s intranet (YourOP), which is the pivotal instrument for informing staff about corporate and managerial matters. Important events and news items were published on a daily basis, and the staff also used the platform to inform others about recent developments in their work. Some 168 news articles and five videos were published. Information from DG Human Resources and Security and other directorates-general was posted regularly. Following the Office’s reorganisation, YourOP was restructured to reflect the changes and to introduce new interaction methods with the Staff Matters portal of DG Human Resources and Security.
The following issues were discussed at joint meetings with the Local Staff Committee, held in the presence of the Office’s Director-General: promotion and mobility; the reorganisation; staff allocation; the relocation of all staff in the Mercier building; and new premises for the Office.
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Annexes
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Annex I: Governing bodies and key persons Members of the Management Committee The Publications Office’s Management Committee is composed as follows:
Mr Alfredo Calot Escobar, Registrar of the Court of Justice, Chair; Mr Klaus Welle, Secretary-General of the European Parliament; Mr Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, Secretary-General of the Council; Mr Martin Selmayr, Secretary-General of the Commission; Mr Alfredo Ruiz Garcia, Secretary-General of the Court of Auditors; Mrs Maria Echevarria, Secretary-General ad interim of the European Economic and Social
Committee; Mr Jiri Burianek, Secretary-General of the European Committee of the Regions.
The European Central Bank participates as an observer.
Organisational chart of the Office (1.1.2019) Director-General R. STROHMEIER Assistant to the Director-General N. HOHN Reporting directly to the Director-General 1. Strategy, governance and internal control L. MARTINELLI 2. HR Business Correspondent P. VANHOEY Directorate A — Information management Director P. SCHMITZ (acting) 1. Standardisation F. CENTURIONE 2. Common data repository P. SCHMITZ 3. Information systems C. KORMANN 4. Preservation and legal deposit C. RICCALTON Directorate B — Production of publications Director H. CELMS 1. Official Journal and case-law R. PAPPALARDO 2. Multimedia and publications T-M. MATTILA 3. Content and demand management P. RUGGIU 4. Quality control M. WARTON-WOODS Directorate C — Access to and reuse of public information Director A. CARNEIRO 1. OP Portal J. PLANOVSKY 2. EUR-Lex and legal information M. WESTERMANN 3. TED and EU public procurement M. CRUZ 4. EU open data and CORDIS V. VOIKOV Directorate D — Corporate services Director E. BEŇOVÁ 1. Stakeholder relations C. ADAM 2. Contracts and copyright V. SCIARRINO 3. Finance R. PISANI 4. Print and distribution A. REIS
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Annex II: Interinstitutional committees
The Publications Office holds the secretariat of the interinstitutional committees listed below. They were set up by decision of the Office’s Management Committee, to which they report. The Management Committee considers that the work carried out is vital for the progress of the Office’s various projects.
Interinstitutional Lex Committee (GIL)
Participating institutions The institutions represented in the Management Committee The European Central Bank The European Investment Bank
Chair Name: Ieva Lejasisaka (Council) Tel.: +32 22815147 Email: [email protected]
Change of chairmanship Every year, in March (after the meeting of the Management Committee)
Terms of reference (summary description)
Ensure coordination in relation to the dissemination and governance of EU legal information
Mandate The description, mandate and rules of procedure of the group were updated by the decision of the meeting of the Management Committee on 22 May 2015
Output Proposals for actions in the relevant area, follow-up and implementation of the actions, synergies and exchange of information
Reporting Minutes, emails, CIRCABC
Decision making By consensus
Reference authority Management Committee
Date of first meeting 23 September 1999
Frequency of meetings 2 times per year
Number of meetings in 2018 2
Main subjects covered Follow-up of progress on the new EUR-Lex Availability status of the different documentary collections Official Journal State of play of N-Lex Document per document production of EU case-law European Legislation Identifier (ELI) National transposition measures National case-law on jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement of judgments in
civil and commercial matters (JURE) Standardisation projects: progress of the IMFC work, ISA programme EU vocabularies Consolidation Summaries of EU legislation Open Data and reuse of information Data protection
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Interinstitutional Lex Committee — Subgroup Methodology (GIL-GM)
Participating institutions The institutions represented in the Management Committee
Chair Name: Marcin Baryn (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-42910 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
Subcommittee of the GIL with the task of discussing and finding solutions to methodological questions mostly related to legal analysis taking into account both the users’ and the institutions’ interests
Mandate The description, mandate and rules of procedure of the group were updated by the decision of the meeting of the Management Committee on 22 May 2015
Decision making By consensus
Output Recommendations, ensuring follow-up in respective institutions
Reporting Reporting to the GIL group at its meetings, minutes, emails
Reference authority GIL
Date of first meeting 24 June 1999
Frequency of meetings 2–4 times per year
Number of meetings in 2018 3
Main subjects covered Methodology questions related to analysis of legal acts Notification of decisions Statistics concerning EU acts and EUR-Lex content Directory of EU legislation codes classification
Interinstitutional Lex Committee — Subgroup Consolidation-Codification (GIL-C)
Participating institutions European Parliament, Council, Commission, Publications Office
Chair Name: Žilvinas Bubnys (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-42802 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
Subgroup in charge of the consolidation work carried out by the Office
Mandate The description, mandate and rules of procedure of the group were updated by the decision of the meeting of the Management Committee on 22 May 2015
Output Proposals for actions in the relevant area, follow-up and implementation of the actions, synergies and exchange of information
Decision making By consensus
Reporting Minutes, emails
Reference authority GIL
Date of first meeting Mid 1990s. In mid-2013 the Consolidation-Codification Group became a subgroup of GIL
Frequency of meetings 2–4 times per year
Number of meetings in 2018 2
Main subjects covered Reporting on consolidation and codification activities Statistics related to consolidation and codification Legal problems encountered during consolidation Consolidation and codification planning Methodology of consolidation Drafting legal opinions for GIL related to consolidation
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Interinstitutional Lex Committee – Subgroup EuroVoc Maintenance Committee (GIL-EuroVoc)
Participating institutions European Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice, Court of Auditors, European Economic and Social Committee, European Committee of the Regions, European Investment Bank, Translation Centre, Publications Office
Chair Name: Sándor Józsa (European Parliament) Tel.: +352 4300-23458 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
Operational development and maintenance work of the multilingual thesaurus EuroVoc
Date of first meeting 1 October 2000
Frequency of meetings Twice a year
Number of meetings in 2018 2
Main subjects covered Organisation of the work of the EuroVoc Maintenance Committee in the framework of the GIL EuroVoc subgroup
Presentation of the new tools for thesaurus management and dissemination State of the collaboration with EU institutions and agencies Presentation of projects undertaken by participating institutions Work for the next EuroVoc releases (4.6, 4.7) Issues about thesaurus maintenance and reindexing policies EuroVoc development policy
Interinstitutional Lex Committee — Subgroup Summaries of EU legislation
Participating institutions European Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice, European Economic and Social Committee, European Committee of the Regions
Chair Name: Maria Westermann (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-42992 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
Group supervising activities related to the Summaries of EU legislation as an interinstitutional service
Mandate Created as working group by the decision of the Management Committee on 18 March 2011 which took the role of the Editorial Committee as described in the ‘Role of Editorial Committee’ presented to the parties in the meeting of the working group of 6 November 2012 (compte-rendu de la réunion du Groupe de travail ‘Synthèses de la législation’ du 6 novembre 2012). The description, mandate and rules of procedure of the group were updated by the decision of the meeting of the Management Committee on 22 May 2015
Output Proposals for actions in the relevant area, follow-up and implementation of the actions, synergies and exchange of information
Decision making By consensus
Reporting Minutes, emails
Reference authority GIL
Date of first meeting 12 May 2011
Frequency of meetings 1–2 times per year
Number of meetings in 2018 1
Main subjects covered Budget and financing related to production of summaries Production state of play Project objectives Statistics and reporting
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Interinstitutional CIBA Committee
Participating institutions European Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice, Court of Auditors, European Economic and Social Committee, European Committee of the Regions, European Ombudsman, European Data Protection Supervisor
Chair Name: Roberto Pappalardo (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-42798 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
The Committee coordinates and plans the budgetary publications and it coordinates the development of the common tools for preparing, managing and sharing the text and figures between institutions (CIBA/IBIS — Interinstitutional Budget Information System)
Date of first meeting 1997
Frequency of meetings 3–4 times a year
Number of meetings in 2018 3
Main subjects covered Technical planning of the production of the EU budget Discussion on the development plans and goals for CIBA, in particular with regards
to the optimisation of the system and development of a new system (IBIS) Budgetary follow-up
Interinstitutional Metadata and Formats Committee (IMFC)
Participating institutions All institutions represented in the Management Committee (except for the Court of Auditors)
Chair Name: Peter Schmitz (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-42605 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
The Interinstitutional Metadata and Formats Committee (IMFC) manages the elaboration and maintenance of common interinstitutional standards for the secured and automated exchange of data based on machine-readable structured formats (content and metadata). The IMFC encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing and promotes the adoption of common tools and services in its domain of competence
Date of first meeting 21 November 2018
Frequency of meetings Up to three times a year
Number of meetings in 2018 1
Main subjects covered Elaboration and maintenance of common interinstitutional standards for the secured and automated exchange of data (IMMC Protocol, Common Vocabulary, Common Exchange Model)
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Interinstitutional Metadata and Formats Committee (IMFC) —Permanent Subgroup Common Exchange Model
Participating institutions All institutions represented in the Management Committee
Chair Name: Michael Düro (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-44014 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
The permanent subgroup on content covers the development of the Common Vocabulary (CoV), which gathers, on business level, semantic
structures extracted from documents pertaining to the ordinary legislative procedure (OLP documents), and of
the Common Exchange Model (CEM), which is based on the CoV and represents in XML, more specifically in Akoma Ntoso, an OASIS standard, the specification for all future exchanges of legal documents in the EU legislative process
Date of first meeting 24 January 2019 (with 11 November 2014 for the predecessor IFC subgroup Common Vocabulary)
Frequency of meetings Variable; work is also done in bilateral meetings and by written procedure
Number of meetings in 2018 10 CoV meetings & 8 CEM meetings for the predecessor subgroups
Main subjects covered Elaboration and maintenance of the Common Vocabulary and of the Common Exchange Model, subsequent presentation to the IMFC plenary (for adoption)
Interinstitutional Digital Publishing Committee (IDPC)
Participating institutions All institutions
Chair Name: Harolds Celms (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-44399 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
Three domains of cooperation have already been identified: Editorial — to exchange best practices in the transition from the traditional linear
and print-oriented content into a modern digitally-oriented one (questions of the language/style, targeting, medium, etc.)
Technical/workflow-related — to streamline the transition into a genuine multichannel and collaborative workflow (the Office is expected to take a lead in rationalising and modernising the workflows/tools involved)
Discoverability-related — to share best practices and make clear progress, so that the investment made by institutions to create and publish content could have a real communication impact
Date of first meeting 29 June 2015
Frequency of meetings One plenary meeting per year (with presence of leading outside experts), ad hoc working meetings
Number of meetings in 2018 No meeting in 2018, meeting foreseen in 2019
Main subjects covered Major trends and challenges in digital publishing (multi-channelling, convergence between e-book and web, visual aspect of publishing)
Discoverability of institutional publications (role of metadata widgets and structured information)
Accessibility of digital products for visually impaired persons — legal state of affairs, technical aspects and the Office’s role
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EU Official Directory Steering Committee
Participating institutions EU institutions and bodies which publish their organisation charts in the official directory of the European Union (EU Whoiswho)
Chair Name: Sergio Leal (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-42247 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
Steering committee for the operation of the official directory of the European Union (digital and print editions)
Mandate The project of the electronic official directory of the European Union was decided by the Management Committee of the Publications Office on 5 June 1990. On 9 July 1993, the Management Committee created this steering committee in order to answer all EU Whoiswho related issues
Output Sharing good practices, discussing technical and editorial improvements
Decision making No formal decision power
Reporting No formal reporting outside the steering committee Minutes, emails
Reference authority Management Committee
Date of first meeting 1994
Frequency of meetings Once or twice per year
Number of meetings in 2018 1
Main subjects covered PDF-on-demand in production Statistics about production and dissemination
Interinstitutional Style Guide Steering Committee
Participating institutions All institutions represented in the Management Committee
Chair Name: Bernard Lahure (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-42378 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
Steering committee (composed mainly of lawyer-linguists and translation services of the institutions): coordination in order to create and maintain the style guide in all official languages + 24 linguistic subgroups + working group ‘Currencies, countries, languages’
Date of first meeting February 1992
Frequency of meetings Variable; most of the work is done by written procedure; occasional meetings when necessary
Number of meetings in 2018 Several hundred written procedures were conducted with departments concerned following requests received + various meetings or videoconferences in several subgroups (e.g. the EN group for revision of Part IV)
Main subjects covered Writing rules and conventions Normative terminology
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EU Open Data Portal Steering Committee
Participating institutions European Parliament, Council, European Court of Auditors, European Central Bank, European Ombudsman, Secretariat-General and several directorates-general of the Commission, and other EU bodies
Chair Name: António Carneiro (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-42310 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
Management of the EU Open Data Portal and related activities The inter-service group is set up by Article 12 of Commission Decision 2011/833/EU of 12 December 2011 on the reuse of Commission documents. Its charter members are the Publications Office (chair), Secretariat-General of the Commission, Commission Directorates-General for Communication, for Communications Networks, for Informatics and several directorates-general representing the data providers. Article 12 foresees that other institutions may be invited to join the committee at a later stage, and the group was joined by the European Parliament, the Council, the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors and the Committees. The role of the inter-service group is consultative, representing the data providers and overseeing the project leading to the implementation of the data portal The EU Open Data Portal Steering Committee also steers the work of the URI Committee and defines the EU URI policy and the URI management process. The URI Committee coordinates the operational implementation of the EU persistent URI policy
Mandate Commission Decision 2011/833/EU
Output Meeting minutes, discussion documents, recommendations, sharing of good practice
Decision making No
Reporting Meeting minutes, emails
Reference authority Management Committee
Date of first meeting March 2012
Frequency of meetings Twice per year
Number of meetings in 2018 1
Main subjects covered Follow-up on the development of the portal Acquisition of data providers and datasets Promotion of open data activities Metadata standardisation and other interoperability activities Web metrics Data quality and reusability Governance of the data.europa.eu subdomain and related unique and persistent
identification schema
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EU Open Data Portal — Subgroup URI Committee
Participating institutions European Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice, Court of Auditors, European Economic and Social Committee, European Committee of the Regions. Each institution is represented by a mandated representative and potentially by experts from its services
Chair Name: Peter Van Landegem (European Commission, Secretariat-General) Tel.: +32 229-91552 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
The URI Committee coordinates the implementation of the EU persistent URI policy. It is in charge of the central governance and monitoring of persistent URIs in the data.europa.eu subdomain
Mandate The URI Committee consists of mandated official representatives of the EU institutions assisted by invited experts. Its presidency is ensured in rotation by the official representatives of the EU institutions
Decision process Consensus
Reference authority The URI Committee reports to the EU Open Data Portal that has the role of URI Steering Committee and can propose changes to the EU persistent URI policy
Communication Interinstitutional wiki, emails
Frequency of meetings 2-3 times per year
Number of meetings in 2018 3
Main subjects covered Creation of collaborative spaces Sharing of best practices Presentation of awareness-raising activities Proof of concept for NUTS with persistent URIs Approval of service agreements for redirection service Approval or requests for URI collection ID and set-up of redirections in the
data.europa.eu subdomain
Interinstitutional Committee on Long-term Preservation (ICLP)
Participating institutions European Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice, European Central Bank, Court of Auditors, European Economic and Social Committee
Chair Name: Carol Riccalton (Publications Office) Tel.: +352 2929-42830 Email: [email protected]
Terms of reference (summary description)
The Interinstitutional Committee on Long-term Preservation (ICLP) was established to supervise the activities of the Publications Office in the field of long-term preservation. In particular it will be responsible for overseeing the implementation and governance of the Digital Preservation Plan (to be confirmed after 6 March 2019)
Mandate Digital Preservation Plan – Interinstitutional Committee on Digital Preservation (ICLP) – PE-8 CD(2018)75
Output To be confirmed after 6 March 2019
Decision making To be confirmed after 6 March 2019
Reporting To be confirmed after 6 March 2019
Reference authority Management Committee
Date of first meeting 6 March 2019
Frequency of meetings To be confirmed after 6 March 2019
Number of meetings in 2018 No meetings in 2018 (new committee; it will also incorporate the Interinstitutional Working Group on Web Preservation)
Main subjects covered Digital and web preservation
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Annex III: Tables and graphs
Tables Principal indicators of the Publications Office’s activity from 2011 to 2018
Activities and services 1. Official Journal: number of pages per series 2. Official Journal: main figures 3. Official Journal: pages produced, by institution 4. Public procurement notices published 5. Case-law: number of documents and pages produced 6. Publications: principal production indicators 7. Publications: production, by institution (titles) 8. Number of corrected pages, by language 9. Bibliographical and legal data records, by type of publication 10. Physical distribution, by type of product 11. Annual stock movements 12. Mailing list management 13. Helpdesk: requests received, by theme 14. Helpdesk: the 10 most frequently asked questions 15. Documentary units uploaded to EUR-Lex, by sector
Personnel management 16. Establishment plan 17. Geographical balance
Financial management 18. Overall budgetary implementation 19. Appropriations for which the Director-General of the Publications Office is authorising officer
by delegation 20. Appropriations for which the Director-General of the Publications Office is authorising officer
by co-delegation 21. Appropriations for which the Director-General of the Publications Office is authorising officer
by subdelegation 22. Outturn of commitment appropriations on 31 December, by budget line and fund source 23. Outturn of payment appropriations on 31 December, by budget line and fund source 24. Management of the budget on behalf of the institutions (payments) 25. Recovery orders issued assimilated to assigned revenue 26. Official Journal: direct costs 27. Invoicing
27a. Publications: invoicing, by institution, agency or body 27b. eRecueil: invoicing
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Commercial accounts 28. Balance sheet 29. Profit-and-loss account 30. Sales revenue 31. Commercial invoicing, by product category
Procurement and contracts 32. Tender procedures concluded 33. Contract management
Graphs 1. Evolution of staff from 1969 onwards 2. Evolution of the Official Journal production from 1952 onwards 3. EUR-Lex consultation figures 4. TED consultation figures 5. OP Portal consultation figures 6. EU Open Data Portal consultation figures 7. CORDIS consultation figures
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Tables
Principal indicators of the Publications Office’s activity from 2011 to 2018
Sector 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 change
2018/2017 change
2018/2011 (*) Access and reuse
EUR-Lex — Access to law Visits (1) 60 837 084 63 322 334 71 541 592 67 965 286 70 147 527 76 445 883 50 128 868 58 073 200 15.8 - 4.5 Pages consulted (1) 181 900 157 179 329 314 195 785 952 184 723 869 191 334 752 210 615 033 212 560 730 226 105 147 6.4 24.3 Available documents 4 671 223 5 287 263 5 565 263 5 734 070 5 802 524 8 119 779 8 195 732 8 572 024 4.6 83.5 Uploaded documentary units 37 406 78 914 41 995 26 229 27 095 33 166 25 314 24 191 - 4.4 - 35.3 Availability (%) 99.30 99.60 99.80 99.60 99.18 99.56 99.08 99.56 0.5 0.3
TED — Public procurement
Visits (1) 11 204 320 13 213 458 12 754 369 12 473 962 13 642 531 16 565 649 8 108 194 8 900 358 9.8 - 20.6 Pages consulted (1) 37 583 820 40 148 205 58 399 017 49 048 223 53 414 541 57 951 563 47 730 680 43 447 604 - 9.0 15.6 Availability (%) 99.80 99.89 99.84 99.81 99.90 99.94 99.98 99.95 0.0 0.2
Notices published in the OJ S 411 850 414 836 443 079 446 419 463 821 466 898 528 975 578 501 9.4 40.5 OP Portal (2)
Visits 6 576 181 6 655 383 5 859 479 7 038 687 20.1 7.0 Pages consulted 21 525 456 22 329 447 20 677 772 21 998 717 6.4 2.2 Available publications’ titles 87 642 92 524 98 758 104 769 110 812 117 967 250 309 267 697 6.9 205.4 PDF files downloaded 712 399 724 695 1 049 782 1 135 195 1 185 238 1 187 566 978 284 1 465 539 49.8 105.7
CORDIS (3) Visits 4 698 327 6 406 548 5 503 214 3 290 213 3 952 300 4 582 612 3 463 902 4 228 169 22.1 - 10.0 Pages consulted 29 413 823 34 467 810 33 578 066 12 694 610 14 061 955 13 632 827 13 065 944 14 092 455 7.9 - 52.1 Availability (%) 99.03 99.71 99.89 97.74 98.00 98.66 99.62 99.19 - 0.4 0.2
EU Open Data Portal Visits (1) 105 352 309 187 586 039 787 013 516 174 817 574 58.4 676.0 Pages consulted (1) 615 396 1 534 760 1 812 382 2 209 002 1 601 484 2 430 119 51.7 294.9 Documentary units (data sets) proposed in the catalogue of the EU Open Data Portal
6 482 7 681 7 894 9 255 11 798 12 912 9.4 99.2
Production Official Journal L issues 350 362 355 372 347 367 355 361 1.7 3.1 Official Journal L pages 496 515 583 354 568 114 801 813 709 289 779 470 726 753 717 899 - 1.2 44.6 Official Journal C issues 515 549 601 603 530 565 499 528 5.8 2.5
of which Official Journal CE issues 46 46 117 31 0 0 0 0 — — Official Journal C pages 499 576 511 757 1 168 964 1 193 087 454 171 655 143 624 074 639 360 2.4 28.0
of which Official Journal CE pages 149 610 158 496 831 009 368 161 0 0 0 0 — — Other budgetary documents’ pages 69 334 103 782 76 018 108 165 82 715 86 285 84 984 120 934 42.3 74.4 Case-law
Number of documents 19 258 (6) 58 534 54 561 - 6.8 — Number of pages 132 157 (6) 512 610 402 703 - 21.4 —
Corrected pages (Official Journal) 509 478 527 939 384 835 905 473 849 342 1 022 906 1 214 550 1 038 884 - 14.5 103.9 Publications produced 5 972 5 816 9 153 10 312 7 860 10 403 10 785 13 691 26.9 129.3 Identifiers (4) 13 036 16 578 19 335 26 292 23 984 30 268 27 161 36 521 34.5 180.2 Corrected pages (general publications) 505 622 797 174 1 097 640 585 472 512 347 517 881 379 092 361 504 - 4.6 - 28.5
Corrected pages (case-law) (5) 712 987 701 231 642 777 974 911 604 725 - 38.0 - 15.2 Information and online assistance — Number of contacts 38 979 33 784 34 715 31 068 25 822 24 549 21 615 20 206 - 6.5 - 48.2
Copies distributed (million) 21.59 17.92 14.97 16.61 11.17 8.64 9.26 8.28 - 10.6 - 61.6 Copies in stock (million) 28.67 26.10 18.77 15.73 15.53 14.12 12.35 12.41 0.5 - 56.7
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Sector 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 change 2018/2017
change 2018/2011 (*)
Administrative budget (26 01 09 00) 90 710 028 90 588 018 90 731 564 90 902 207 86 811 123 84 638 617 87 336 726 98 304 772 12.6 8.4 Operating budgets Consolidation of Union law (26 01 10) 1 499 907 1 250 000 1 419 978 1 629 993 1 414 983 1 400 921 1 399 995 1 399 989 0.0 - 6.7 Official Journal of the European Union (L and C series) (26 01 11) 12 145 981 13 106 267 21 484 161 17 198 587 13 088 746 12 701 738 13 680 280 2 390 000 - 82.5 - 80.3
Summaries of Union legislation (26 01 12) 886 032 1 321 196 1 177 720 1 008 203 845 847 833 362 - 1.5 - 5.9
Procedures for awarding and advertising public supply, works and services contracts (26 02 01)
12 044 332 13 615 202 8 146 622 9 710 158 8 924 526 7 547 512 8 208 923 6 601 575 - 19.6 - 45.2
Preparatory action — Linked open data in European public administration (25 01 77 05)
1 100 000
Pilot project — PublicAccess.eu (26 03 77 03) 1 000 000 500 000
Pilot project — Promoting Linked Open Data (26 03 77 05)
500 000 249 921
CORDIS (08 02 05) 7 200 000 7 720 000 7 898 421 5 000 000 5 000 000 5 000 000 5 456 679 5 000 877 - 8.4 - 30.5 Other production costs 19 982 249 18 796 530 9 722 533 7 115 965 6 467 169 6 182 917 7 231 878 5 678 933 - 21.5 - 71.6 Staff (posts) 679 672 668 646 630 601 595 567 - 4.7 - 16.5 (*) Changes reflect the variation between 2018 and 2011 or the year of the beginning of the activity / budget line. (1) The tool used to collect statistics changed. Results as from 2017 are not comparable with the previous years. (2) The old site EU Bookshop was phased out on 13 June 2017. Since 14 June 2017 the access to the collection of general publications is only available through the OP Portal. (3) The tool used to collect statistics changed in 2014. Results as from 2014 are not comparable with the previous years. (4) The counting methodology changed. The figures for 2017 and 2018 correspond to the number of catalogue numbers allocated / used for new general publication, excluding reprints. (5) For years 2011 to 2013, general publications and case-law corrected pages were counted together. (6) The figures for 2016 cover the period as of July 2016 when case-law was published document by document and not by monthly volumes.
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Activities and services
Table 1 Official Journal: number of pages per series
Series 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 OJ L 496 515 583 354 568 114 801 813 709 289 779 470 726 753 717 899 OJ C 499 576 511 757 1 168 964 1 193 087 454 171 655 143 624 074 639 360 Other budgetary documents 69 334 103 782 76 018 108 165 82 715 86 285 84 984 120 934 Total 1 065 425 1 198 893 1 813 096 2 103 065 1 246 175 1 520 898 1 435 811 1 478 193
Table 2 Official Journal: main figures
2017 2018
Series Number of issues
Pages/issue/ language Pages Number of
issues Pages/issue/
language Pages
OJ L 355 89 726 753 361 87 717 899 OJ C 499 54 624 074 528 53 639 360 Other budgetary documents (‘Documents de travail’ and ‘Teletabs’) — — 332 1 322 322
Line-by-line and amending letters (online publication) 8 876 20 160 7 864 19 872 Draft budget (paper edition) 1 2 804 64 492 1 2 784 64 032 Draft budget (online only / second edition) n/a n/a n/a 1 1 596 36 708 Total 863 — 1 435 811 899 — 1 478 193
Table 3 Official Journal: pages produced, by institution
Series Institution 2017 2018 Difference Change 2018/2017 (%)
L series (361 issues)
European Parliament 90 194 95 562 5 368 6.0 Council 127 134 120 035 - 7 099 - 5.6 Commission 489 478 493 543 4 065 0.8 Court of Justice 0 970 970 — Court of Auditors 0 0 0 — European Economic and Social Committee 0 0 0 — Committee of the Regions 0 0 0 — Others (1) 19 947 7 789 - 12 158 - 61.0
Subtotal 726 753 717 899 - 8 854 - 1.2
C series (528 issues)
European Parliament 270 727 280 414 9 687 3.6 Council 39 689 55 844 16 155 40.7 Commission 178 185 166 077 - 12 108 - 6.8 Court of Justice 55 188 54 907 - 281 - 0.5 Court of Auditors 17 671 18 730 1 059 6.0 European Economic and Social Committee 22 822 25 306 2 484 10.9 Committee of the Regions 15 111 17 020 1 909 12.6 Others (1) 24 682 21 062 - 3 620 - 14.7
Subtotal 624 075 639 360 15 285 2.4
L and C series (889 issues)
European Parliament 360 921 375 976 15 055 4.2 Council 166 823 175 879 9 056 5.4 Commission 667 663 659 620 - 8 043 - 1.2 Court of Justice 55 188 55 877 689 1.2 Court of Auditors 17 671 18 730 1 059 6.0 European Economic and Social Committee 22 822 25 306 2 484 10.9 Committee of the Regions 15 111 17 020 1 909 12.6 Others (1) 44 629 28 851 - 15 778 - 35.4
Total 1 350 828 1 357 259 6 431 0.5 (1) Pages produced for other bodies of the European Union, for which no budgetary estimates are made by the Publications Office, are not included.
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Table 4 Public procurement notices published
Core notices (1) Other notices (2) Total EU institutions and other bodies / International organisations 4 524 869 5 393 Subtotal 4 524 869 5 393 Member States Belgium 9 200 3 369 12 569 Bulgaria 14 489 1 609 16 098 Czech Republic 20 238 6 492 26 730 Denmark 6 291 771 7 062 Germany 81 241 11 525 92 766 Estonia 2 790 1 276 4 066 Ireland 2 952 173 3 125 Greece 4 866 746 5 612 Spain 29 920 2 995 32 915 France 86 837 6 316 93 153 Croatia 3 947 1 134 5 081 Italy 21 064 2 356 23 420 Cyprus 787 199 986 Latvia 4 022 715 4 737 Lithuania 6 357 1 460 7 817 Luxembourg 1 097 37 1 134 Hungary 6 069 3 246 9 315 Malta 1 553 175 1 728 Netherlands 13 765 1 656 15 421 Austria 6 428 632 7 060 Poland 53 902 20 273 74 175 Portugal 6 848 695 7 543 Romania 11 994 7 151 19 145 Slovenia 7 500 1 695 9 195 Slovakia 3 868 2 000 5 868 Finland 8 401 1 127 9 528 Sweden 16 270 1 606 17 876 United Kingdom 35 757 2 082 37 839 Subtotal 468 453 83 511 551 964 Candidate countries 2 693 206 2 899 European Economic Area countries 9 000 854 9 854 Government Procurement Agreement countries 7 826 92 7 918 Other 407 66 473 Subtotal 19 926 1 218 21 144 Total 492 903 85 598 578 501 (1) Prior information notice, contract notice and contract award notice published on the basis of Directives 2009/81/EC, 2014/23/EU, 2014/24/EU, 2014/25/EU and Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007. (2) Number of supplementary information, corrigenda and miscellaneous information notices are added directly to totals of countries of origin.
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Table 5 Case-law: number of documents and pages produced
Number of documents Number of pages 2017 2018 2017 2018 Information on unpublished decisions 4 152 4 241 5 940 6 221 Judgements 15 717 10 489 184 301 126 572 Opinions 93 1 3 308 44 Opinions of Advocate General 11 494 7 405 189 932 131 341 Orders 723 278 5 542 2 409 Summaries 11 428 11 262 27 058 25 400 Views of Advocate General 2 0 30 0 Decision review 0 26 0 52 Court of Justice 43 609 33 702 416 111 292 039 Information on unpublished decisions 5 814 13 197 11 548 29 798 Judgements 2 856 2 924 59 243 61 295 Judgments (extracts) 404 371 4 088 4 467 Orders 546 396 5 508 3 272 Orders (extracts) 18 117 Summaries 3 068 3 904 9 393 11 591 General Court 12 688 20 810 89 780 110 540 Judgements 37 3 647 32 Orders 68 0 472 0 Summaries 2 132 46 5 600 92 Civil Service Tribunal 2 237 49 6 719 124 Total 58 534 54 561 512 610 402 703
Table 6 Publications: principal production indicators
2017 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) Publications 10 785 13 691 26.9 Outputs (1) 29 780 37 507 25.9 (1) Outputs: number of electronic files produced. Each project / publication request generally covers several outputs, i.e. different linguistic versions (titles) or several media.
Table 7 Publications: production, by institution (titles)
Institution / agency 2017 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) European Parliament 656 661 0.8 Council 362 247 - 31.8 Commission 6 512 9 322 43.2 Court of Justice 308 214 - 30.5 Court of Auditors 810 947 16.9 European Economic and Social Committee 143 8 - 94.4 Committee of the Regions 26 5 - 80.8 European Central Bank 0 93 — Decentralised agencies 1 849 1 939 4.9 Other 119 255 114.3 Total 10 785 13 691 26.9
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Table 8 Number of corrected pages, by language
Official Journal General publications Case-law Language 2017 2018 % 2017 2018 % 2017 2018 % BG 52 122 45 324 - 13.0 15 031 14 350 - 4.5 42 820 27 492 - 35.8 ES 52 525 45 165 - 14.0 15 571 19 396 24.6 44 479 28 322 - 36.3 CS 52 228 45 203 - 13.5 11 781 11 106 - 5.7 40 076 24 624 - 38.6 DA 52 060 44 439 - 14.6 12 440 13 605 9.4 43 577 27 811 - 36.2 DE 56 120 48 185 - 14.1 16 656 18 805 12.9 40 154 25 354 - 36.9 ET 51 824 44 222 - 14.7 14 258 12 359 - 13.3 39 960 27 145 - 32.1 EL 52 315 44 401 - 15.1 18 407 13 258 - 28.0 49 091 29 300 - 40.3 EN 53 494 45 666 - 14.6 41 424 50 405 21.7 34 557 16 886 - 51.1 FR 54 112 45 933 - 15.1 16 688 22 236 33.2 25 512 7 725 - 69.7 GA 6 683 6 207 - 7.1 5 997 5 006 - 16.5 — — — HR 52 154 44 345 - 15.0 15 974 10 561 - 33.9 52 560 26 293 - 50.0 IT 52 529 44 753 - 14.8 17 315 16 095 - 7.0 47 449 29 960 - 36.9 LV 51 898 44 280 - 14.7 13 964 12 722 - 8.9 39 500 26 977 - 31.7 LT 51 889 44 354 - 14.5 14 605 13 040 - 10.7 40 979 27 041 - 34.0 HU 52 116 44 389 - 14.8 17 054 10 961 - 35.7 47 859 30 596 - 36.1 MT 50 939 43 764 - 14.1 12 218 11 314 - 7.4 48 387 29 674 - 38.7 NL 52 127 44 876 - 13.9 13 274 12 063 - 9.1 43 693 28 317 - 35.2 PL 55 242 46 717 - 15.4 17 337 17 035 - 1.7 41 605 27 163 - 34.7 PT 51 792 44 331 - 14.4 15 466 13 120 - 15.2 43 047 29 581 - 31.3 RO 52 116 44 498 - 14.6 13 977 11 603 - 17.0 45 137 28 861 - 36.1 SK 51 989 44 316 - 14.8 14 804 10 865 - 26.6 40 288 25 078 - 37.8 SL 52 001 44 625 - 14.2 15 415 13 289 - 13.8 37 870 25 643 - 32.3 FI 52 079 44 345 - 14.9 14 247 14 248 0.0 42 951 27 986 - 34.8 SV 52 196 44 546 - 14.7 13 071 11 493 - 12.1 43 360 26 896 - 38.0 Others — — — 2 118 2 569 21.3 — — — Total 1 214 550 1 038 884 - 14.5 379 092 361 504 - 4.6 974 911 604 725 - 38.0
Table 9 Bibliographical and legal data records, by type of publication
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 EUR-Lex documentary units 41 995 (1) 26 229 (2) 27 095 33 166 25 314 24 191 Publications notices (general publications) 13 825 16 179 18 497 21 877 22 249 26 225 Total 55 820 42 408 45 592 55 043 47 563 50 416 (1) In 2013, 26 917 notices for written questions (backlog) were uploaded to EUR-Lex; this type of document has not been published for several years. (2) In 2014, 7 739 notices for written questions uploaded to EUR-Lex correspond to backlog published in 2013.
Table 10 Physical distribution, by type of product
Copies distributed in 2017 Copies distributed in 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) Total distributed via mailing list 5 311 164 4 902 317 - 7.7 Individual orders 3 953 389 3 381 050 - 14.5 Total 9 264 553 8 283 367 - 10.6
Table 11 Annual stock movements
Number of copies 2017 Number of copies 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) Stock on 1 January 14 118 351 12 349 390 - 12.5 In-stock entries 11 280 074 10 296 658 - 8.7 Distribution (via mailing list and individual orders) - 9 264 553 - 8 283 367 - 10.6 Stock reduction - 3 784 482 - 1 952 209 - 48.4 Stock on 31 December 12 349 390 12 410 472 0.5
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Table 12 Mailing list management
2017 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) Number of addresses on 31 December 124 645 46 800 - 62.5 Number of subscriptions on 31 December 125 279 51 300 - 59.1
Table 13 Helpdesk: requests received, by theme
2017 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) Public procurement (TED, SIMAP, eTendering) 13 659 13 973 2.3 Legislation (Document delivery, EUR-Lex, Summaries of EU legislation) 3 006 2 118 - 29.5 Publications Office Portal (EU Bookshop, general information) 3 350 2 535 - 24.3 CORDIS 1 205 1 055 - 12.4 EU Open Data Portal 301 394 30.9 EU Whoiswho 38 31 - 18.4 EuroVoc & Metadata Registry 56 100 78.6 Total 21 615 20 206 - 6.5
Table 14 Helpdesk: the 10 most frequently asked questions
Type of question Number of questions 1 TED.TED Reminders.Reference numbers provided 1 736 2 SIMAP.eNotices.How to publish.Cancellation/Corrigendum.Before publication 1 358 3 TED.TED Reminders.General information 1 102 4 SIMAP.eNotices.How to publish.Cancellation/Corrigendum.After publication 1 029 5 SIMAP.eNotices.How to publish.Cancellation/Corrigendum.After publication 675 6 SIMAP.eNotices.Search.Publication status 583 7 TED.Document search.Specific document 519 8 EUR-Lex.Europe Direct 498 9 SIMAP.eNotices.How to publish.Contract award notice 497
10 OP Portal.EUB - Search on publications.Search for free publications 353
Table 15 Documentary units uploaded to EUR-Lex, by sector
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Cumulative at 31
December 2018 (3) 1 Treaties 28 0 778 6 2 9 801 2 International agreements 415 300 299 429 353 10 792 3 Secondary legislation 3 994 3 722 3 457 3 445 3 033 206 636 4 Complementary law 42 28 20 13 32 1 436 5 Preparatory acts 2 696 3 831 4 769 5 886 8 399 108 119 6 EU case-law 4 379 4 535 4 446 4 350 4 334 61 462 7 National implementing measures 61 11 344 11 870 7 850 5 824 161 587 8 National case-law 1 070 458 797 694 172 32 636 9 Parliamentary questions 10 704 26 0 0 0 197 036 C Official Journal C series 1 672 1 292 1 330 917 548 55 368 E European Free Trade Association 114 96 93 103 67 1 799 0 Consolidated acts (1) 1 054 1 463 1 295 1 274 938 23 411 Without sector (2) 4 012 347 489 114 868 Total 26 229 27 095 33 166 25 314 24 191 984 951 (1) Excluding sub-versions. (2) Documents without a legal analysis. The total includes documents for the years before 2016, although they were reported for the first time in 2016, and notices for procedures. (3) All documents available on EUR-Lex. Notices for procedures (37 437) are not included.
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Personnel management
Table 16 Establishment plan
TDE Total AD5 ‒ AD.16 AST1 ‒ AST11 AST ‒ SC 1/01/2012 679 111 568 31/12/2012 672 111 561 CRT (2) : 7 AST
31/12/2013 668 121 547 Allocation of 10 AD enlargement SC (1): 7 AST/SC + CRT (2) 7 AST/SC
1/01/2014 664 121 433 110 Transfer of 2 AST + 2 AST/SC to OIL 31/12/2014 646 121 433 92 SC (1): 7 AST/SC + CRT (2): 11 AST/SC
31/12/2015 630 128 433 69 Conversion of 7 AST/SC to 7 AD SC (1) SC (1): 7 AST/SC + CRT (2): 9 AST/SC
31/12/2016 601 131 433 37 Conversion of 3 AST/SC to 3 AD, SC (1): 7 AST/SC + CRT (2): 21 AST/SC + TEC (3): 1 AST/SC
31/12/2017 595 132 427 36 Reduction of 6 AST (1) and 1 SC (3), allocation of 1 AST (Irish derogation), conversion of 1 AST into 1 AD
31/12/2018 567 131 405 31 Reduction of 3 AST/SC (2), transfer of 9 AST to
AMC-HR, 2 AST/SC to OIL, 11 AST + 3 AD to DIGIT, conversion of 2 AST into 2 AD
Source: SYSPER2. (1) Staff cut of 5 % over 5 years applying to all institutions. (2) Commission redeployment taxes to serve its priorities. (3) Transformation into credits for contractual agents.
Table 17 Geographical balance
AD AST AST ‒ SC Total Belgium 12 45 3 60 Bulgaria 3 7 10 Czech Republic 3 9 12 Denmark 1 8 9 Germany 10 21 31 Estonia 1 7 8 Ireland 3 3 Greece 7 26 33 Spain 7 21 28 France 14 77 91 Croatia 1 8 9 Italy 10 26 36 Cyprus 0 Latvia 2 8 10 Lithuania 3 9 12 Luxembourg 2 13 15 Hungary 3 14 17 Malta 1 3 4 Netherlands 1 3 4 Austria 1 4 5 Poland 14 19 33 Portugal 7 15 22 Romania 9 16 25 Slovenia 2 8 10 Slovakia 4 14 18 Finland 14 14 Sweden 1 6 7 United Kingdom 3 16 19 Total 122 420 3 545
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Financial management
Table 18 Overall budgetary implementation (EUR)
Heading 2017 2018 Budget items formally delegated to the Office (1) 111 471 771.57 110 629 698.06 Budget items co-delegated to the Office 9 103 670.34 7 497 151.99 Budget items subdelegated to the Office 1 132 687.26 1 231 777.13 Total 121 708 129.17 119 358 627.18 (1) Including appropriations from the institutions budgets as assigned revenue under the corresponding budget lines.
Table 19 Appropriations for which the Director-General of the Publications Office is authorising officer by delegation
(EUR) Heading Commitment appropriations (1) Payment appropriations (2) (section III ‒Commission) Amounts committed Implementation (%) Amounts paid Implementation (%) 26 01 09 00 (*) Publications Office 98 304 772.37 97.7 90 134 133.23 84.4 26 01 10 (*) Consolidation of Union law 1 399 988.63 100.0 1 312 832.08 74.5
26 01 11 (*) Official Journal of the European Union (L and C series)
2 390 000.00 87.2 5 038 445.23 86.9
26 01 12 (*) Summaries of Union legislation 833 361.58 99.2 1 036 418.65 71.5
26 02 01 (**) Procedures for awarding and advertising public supply, works and services contracts
6 601 575.48 100.0 6 797 926.60 99.9
25 01 77 05 (**) Preparatory action — Linked open data in European public administration
1 100 000.00 100.0 265 537.50 60.7
26 03 77 03 (**) Pilot project — PublicAccess.eu — — 214 993.90 100.0 Total 110 629 698.06 97.6 104 800 287.19 85.0 (*) Administrative credits (non-differentiated): commitment appropriations equal payment appropriations. (**) Operational credits (differentiated): consist of commitment and payment appropriations which may have different amounts. (1) Global implementation, comprising the budget of the year and assigned revenue both from 2018 and carried over from 2017. See Table 22. (2) Global implementation, comprising the budget of the year, payment appropriations authorised to cover commitments from previous year(s), as well as assigned revenue both from 2018 and carried over from 2017. See
Table 23.
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Table 20 Appropriations for which the Director-General of the Publications Office is authorising officer by co-delegation
(EUR) Commitment appropriations Payment appropriations
Budgetary reference
Directorate-General Amounts committed Implementation (%) Amounts paid Implementation (%)
Co-delegated budget lines type II — commitments and payments Title 01 Economic and financial affairs 65 000.00 100.0 41 652.85 64.1
Title 04 Employment, social affairs and inclusion 247 000.00 100.0 187 345.65 91.8
Title 08 Research and innovation 152 210.87 n.a. 100 963.40 n.a.
Title 08 Research and innovation — Horizontal activities of Horizon 2020 (CORDIS)
5 020 757.37 100.0 4 721 487.38 99.9
Title 10 Joint Research centre — Direct research 174 072.04 n.a. 312 603.44 n.a.
Title 14 Taxation and customs union 50 437.55 100.0 35 825.16 100.0 Title 15 Education and culture 150 000.00 100.0 173 503.05 n.a.
Title 15 Employment, social affairs and inclusion 10 000.00 100.0 3 403.64 34.0
Title 16 Communication 1 448 463.83 99.9 2 331 286.46 100.0 Title 17 Health and consumer protection 20 000.00 100.0 6 696.6 33.5 Title 20 Trade 30 000.00 100.0 17 675.66 100.0 Title 24 European Anti-Fraud Office 10 000.00 100.0 5 050.70 50.5 Title 26 EPSO 8 324.82 100.0 4 881.68 58.6 Title 26 HR 2 256.83 100.0 1 186.57 52.6 Title 33 Justice 108 628.68 100.0 339 224.38 99.8
Subtotal co-delegations type II 7 497 151.99 8 282 786.69 Co-delegated budget lines type III — payments only
Title 02 Enterprise and industry — — 54 607.73 — Title 05 Agriculture and rural development — — 25 381.00 — Title 06 Mobility and transport — — 50 083.39 — Title 07 Environment — — 317 403.15 —
Title 09 Communications networks, content and technology — — 2 087.03 —
Title 11 Maritime affairs and fisheries — — 16 164.92 — Title 13 Regional and urban policy — — 192 187.93 — Title 16 Communication — — 263 469.20 — Title 18 Home affairs — — 17 020.11 — Title 21 Development and cooperation — — 50 114.81 —
Title 23 Humanitarian aid and civil protection — — 3 911.38 —
Title 27 Budget — — 30 000.07 — Title 29 Statistics — — 247 450.58 — Title 32 Energy — — 23 894.09 — Title 33 Justice — — 74 765.82 — Title 34 Climate action — — 37 195.41 —
Subtotal co-delegations type III 1 405 736.62 Total 7 497 151.99 9 688 523.31
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Table 21 Appropriations for which the Director-General of the Publications Office is authorising officer by subdelegation
(EUR) Directorate-General Commitment appropriations Payment appropriations (section III ‒ Commission) Amounts committed Implementation (%) Amounts paid Implementation (%)
26 03 01 (*) Directorate-General for Informatics (ISA²) 1 127 341.00 100.0 1 301 000.21 n.a.
26 01 23 04 (**) Office for Infrastructure and Logistics in Luxembourg 54 436.13 100.0 9 989.90 18.3
26 01 23 05 (**) Office for Infrastructure and Logistics in Luxembourg 50 000.00 100.0 41 694.82 83.4
Total 1 231 777.13 100.0 1 352 684.93 n.a. (*) Operational credits (differentiated): consist of commitment and payment appropriations which may have different amounts. (**) Administrative credits (non-differentiated): commitment appropriations equal payment appropriations.
Table 22 Outturn of commitment appropriations on 31 December, by budget line and fund source
(EUR)
Item Heading Fund
source (1)
Commitment appropriations
Budget changes
Total commitment
appropriations
Executed commitment
appropriations
Committed (%)
(1) (2) (3=1+2) (4) (5=4/3) 26 01 09 00 Publications Office C1 94 536 400.00 - 874 460.00 (2) 93 661 940.00 93 661 939.97 100.0
C4 4 354 994.45 4 354 994.45 2 048 011.73 47.0 C5 2 594 820.67 2 594 820.67 2 594 820.67 100.0
Subtotal 101 486 215.12 - 874 460.00 100 611 755.12 98 304 772.37 97.7 26 01 10 Consolidation of Union law C1 1 400 000.00 1 400 000.00 1 399 988.63 100.0
Subtotal 1 400 000.00 1 400 000.00 1 399 988.63 100.0 26 01 11 Official Journal of the European Union
(L and C series) C1 1 573 000.00 1 573 000.00 1 573 000.00 100.0 C4 988 235.78 988 235.78 636 629.79 64.4 C5 180 370.21 180 370.21 180 370.21 100.0
Subtotal 2 741 605.99 2 741 605.99 2 390 000.00 87.2 26 01 12 Summaries of Union legislation C1 280 000.00 280 000.00 280 000.00 100.0
C4 560 000.00 560 000.00 553 359.84 98.8 C5 1.74 1.74 1.74 100.0
Subtotal 840 001.74 840 001.74 833 361.58 99.2 26 02 01 Procedures for awarding and
advertising public supply, works and service contracts
C1 7 500 000.00 - 900 000.00 (3) 6 600 000.00 6 600 000.00 100.0 C4 1 575.48 1 575.48 1 575.48 100.0
Subtotal 7 501 575.48 - 900 000.00 6 601 575.48 6 601 575.48 100.0 25 01 77 05 Preparatory action — Linked open
data in European public administration C1 1 100 000.00 1 100 000.00 1 100 000.00 100.0
Subtotal 1 100 000.00 1 100 000.00 1 100 000.00 100.0 Total 115 069 398.33 - 1 774 460.00 113 294 938.33 110 629 698.06 97.6 (1) C1 = Budget of the year; C4 = Assigned revenue of the year, can be carried over; C5 = Assigned revenue, carried over from 2017. (2) An amount of EUR 874 464 (0.9 % of the voted budget) was proposed to the Commission for transfer to OIL (Fischer) and this entire surplus was withdrawn. (3) An amount of EUR 900 000 in commitment appropriations (12.0 % of the voted budget) was proposed to the Commission for transfer and this entire surplus was withdrawn.
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Table 23 Outturn of payment appropriations on 31 December, by budget line and fund source
(EUR)
Item Heading Fund
source (1)
Commitment appropriations
Budget changes
Total payment appropriations
Executed payment
appropriations Paid (%)
(1) (2) (3=1+2) (4) (5=4/3) 26 01 09 00 Publications Office C1 94 536 400.00 - 874 460.00 (2) 93 661 940.00 81 018 276.27 86.5
C4 4 354 994.45 4 354 994.45 342 559.08 7.9 C5 2 594 820.67 2 594 820.67 2 568 483.61 99.0 C8 6 208 863.27 6 208 863.27 6 204 814.27 99.9
Subtotal 107 695 078.39 - 874 460.00 106 820 618.39 90 134 133.23 84.4 26 01 10 Consolidation of Union law C1 1 400 000.00 1 400 000.00 949 739.89 67.8
C8 363 092.19 363 092.19 363 092.19 100.0 Subtotal 1 763 092.19 1 763 092.19 1 312 832.08 74.5
26 01 11 Official Journal of the European Union (L and C series)
C1 1 573 000.00 1 573 000.00 1 513 819.01 96.2 C4 988 235.78 988 235.78 289 756.06 29.3 C5 180 370.21 180 370.21 180 370.21 100.0 C8 3 054 499.95 3 054 499.95 3 054 499.95 100.0
Subtotal 5 796 105.94 5 796 105.94 5 038 445.23 86.9 26 01 12 Summaries of Union legislation C1 280 000.00 280 000.00 249 753.06 89.2
C4 560 000.00 560 000.00 176 883.26 31.6 C5 1.74 1.74 1.74 100.0 C8 609 780.59 609 780.59 609 780.59 100.0
Subtotal 1 449 782.33 1 449 782.33 1 036 418.65 71.5 26 02 01 Procedures for awarding and
advertising public supply, works and service contracts
C1 7 300 000.00 - 500 000.00 (3) 6 800 000.00 6 796 351.12 99.9 C4 1 575.48 1 575.48 1 575.48 100.0
Subtotal 7 301 575.48 - 500 000.00 6 801 575.48 6 797 926.60 99.9 25 01 77 05 Preparatory action — Linked open
data in European public administration C1 550 000.00 - 112 500.00 (4) 437 500.00 265 537.50 60.7
Subtotal 550 000.00 - 112 500.00 437 500.00 265 537.50 60.7 26 03 77 03 Pilot project — PublicAccess.eu C1 180 000.00 35 000.00 (5) 215 000.00 214 993.90 100.0
Subtotal 180 000.00 35 000.00 215 000.00 214 993.90 100.0 Total 124 735 634.33 - 1 451 960.00 123 283 674.33 104 800 287.19 85.0 (1) C1 = Budget of the year; C4 = Assigned revenue of the year, can be carried over; C5 = Assigned revenue, carried over from 2017; C8 = Commitments carried over from 2017. (2) An amount of EUR 874 464 (0.9 % of the voted budget) was proposed to the Commission for transfer to OIL (Fischer) and this entire surplus was withdrawn. (3) An amount of EUR 500 000 in payment appropriations (6.8 % of the voted budget) was proposed to the Commission for transfer and this entire surplus was withdrawn. (4) An amount of EUR 112 500 in payment appropriations (22.5 % of the voted budget) was proposed to the Commission for transfer and this entire surplus was withdrawn. (5) A reinforcement of EUR 35 000 in payment appropriations (19.4 % of the voted budget) was requested from the Commission and the total amount was transferred.
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Table 24 Management of the budget on behalf of the institutions (payments) (EUR)
Total invoiced Invoicing for the Official Journal L and C (appropriations from institutions other than the Commission) 915 369.07 Invoicing for publications (all institutions) 5 678 932.67 Total 6 594 301.74
Table 25 Recovery orders issued assimilated to assigned revenue (EUR)
Budget line 26 01 09 00 01 02 11 — Other management expenditure 5 879.18 26 01 09 00 02 01 00 — Production 3 049 895.65 26 01 09 00 02 02 00 — Long-term preservation 175 680.52 26 01 09 00 02 03 00 — Access and reuse 1 265 298.96 Subtotal 26 01 09 00 4 496 754.31 26 01 11 — Official Journal of the European Union (L and C series) 997 518.06 26 01 12 — Summaries of Union legislation 560 000.00 Subtotal other delegated lines 1 557 518.06 Payments on income lines 80 818.54 Total 6 135 090.91
Table 26 Official Journal: direct costs (EUR)
Parliament Council Commission (1)
Court of Justice
Court of Auditors
Economic and Social
Committee
Committee of the
Regions
Total
Electronic & paper production Official Journal L and C 353 448.62 322 091.31 1 514 095.95 121 157.85 50 587.45 41 546.27 28 414.38 2 431 341.82
Unpublished budgetary documents 1 396.89 1 396.89 100 337.56 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 103 131.35
Total (2) (3) (4) 354 845.51 323 488.21 1 614 433.51 121 157.85 50 587.45 41 546.27 28 414.38 2 534 473.17 (1) Services executed for the Commission, agencies or other EU bodies and charged to budgetary line 26 01 11. (2) This table has been adapted following IAC OP 2011-01 recommendations in order to present an exhaustive financial status for a complete budgetary exercise. (3) Payments done for 2017 credits in 2017 and 2018 (regularisations included, which may lead to negative amounts). (4) Including other EU bodies.
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Table 27a Publications: invoicing, by institution, agency or body (EUR)
Institution, agency or body 2017 2018 2018/2017 Amount % Amount % Difference %
Institutions European Parliament 802 057.95 11.1 635 959.96 11.2 - 166 097.99 - 20.7 Council 109 564.97 1.5 136 689.16 2.4 27 124.19 24.8 Commission 3 986 924.93 55.1 3 228 289.34 56.8 - 758 635.59 - 19.0 Court of Justice 278 516.71 3.9 64 722.90 1.1 - 213 793.81 - 76.8 Court of Auditors 333 389.56 4.6 231 270.42 4.1 - 102 119.14 - 30.6 European Economic and Social Committee 124 278.72 1.7 61 740.00 1.1 - 62 538.72 - 50.3
Committee of the Regions 2 578.31 0.0 1 343.52 0.0 - 1 234.79 - 47.9 Ombudsman 3 233.01 0.0 4 441.68 0.1 1 208.67 37.4 Other (1) 4 350.08 0.1 20 536.62 0.4 16 186.54 372.1 Subtotal 5 644 894.24 78.1 4 384 993.60 77.2 -1 259 900.64 - 22.3 Agencies and other bodies Cedefop 63 487.63 0.9 61 866.59 1.1 - 1 621.04 - 2.6 CORDIS 110 351.82 1.5 25 264.81 0.4 - 85 087.01 - 77.1 FRA 180 364.64 2.5 145 678.41 2.6 - 34 686.23 - 19.2 EACEA 26 131.28 0.4 29 078.92 0.5 2 947.64 11.3 ECDC 14 990.10 0.2 27 548.75 0.5 12 558.65 83.8 EIGE 65 296.19 0.9 15 321.35 0.3 - 49 974.84 - 76.5 EUROFOUND 22 105.39 0.3 33 354.98 0.6 11 249.59 50.9 Europol 33 909.87 0.5 35 908.90 0.6 1 999.03 5.9 EASO 350 013.31 4.8 188 151.59 3.3 - 161 861.72 - 46.2 OLAF 3 628.79 0.1 3 900.98 0.1 272.19 7.5 OSHA 77 178.23 1.1 99 132.45 1.7 21 954.22 28.4 Other agencies 639 526.13 8.8 628 731.34 11.1 - 10 794.79 - 1.7 Subtotal 1 586 983.38 21.9 1 293 939.07 22.8 - 293 044.31 - 18.5 Total 7 231 877.62 100.0 5 678 932.67 100.0 - 1 552 944.95 - 21.5 (1) European External Action Service, European Data Protection Supervisor.
Table 27b eRecueil: invoicing (EUR)
Type of activity 2017 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) Production 158 492.25 148 171.17 - 6.5 Validation 69 687.27 44 560.80 - 36.1 IT development 0.00 0.00 — Total 228 179.52 192 731.97 - 15.5
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Commercial accounts
Table 28 Balance sheet (EUR)
2017 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) Assets Trade accounts receivable 342.74 923.77 169.5 Term deposits 0.00 0.00 — Sight deposits 14 707.29 16 526.51 12.4 Total 15 050.03 17 450.28 15.9 Liabilities Payables directorates-general and institutions 15 050.03 17 450.28 15.9 Sales proceeds to assign 0.00 0.00 — Payables financial and other results 0.00 0.00 — Total 15 050.03 17 450.28 15.9
Table 29 Profit-and-loss account (EUR)
2017 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) Sales Sales invoiced 38 465.36 39 988.91 4.0 Financial and other results Miscellaneous revenue 0.00 0.00 — Credit interest (1) 1 545.69 1 587.28 2.7 Miscellaneous charges 0.00 0.00 — Bank charges - 1 545.69 - 1 587.28 2.7 Subtotal 0.00 0.00 — Operating results 38 465.36 39 988.91 4.0 (1) This amount represents the bank fees charged back to the author services. Bank interest amounts to EUR 0.
Table 30 Sales revenue Authorising institution Monographs Various Total Council 5 391.00 — 5 391.00 Commission (except the Publications Office) 6 041.59 — 6 041.59 Other institutions (European Parliament, Court of Justice, Court of Auditors, European Economic and Social Committee, Committee of the Regions) — — —
Agencies 330.00 — 330.00 Publications Office 18 234.63 9 991.69 28 226.32 Total 29 997.22 9 991.69 39 988.91
Table 31 Commercial invoicing, by product category (EUR)
2017 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) Monographs
Books 15 887.00 18 234.63 14.8 Others (1) 13 655.12 11 762.59 - 13.9
Various (2) 8 923.24 9 991.69 12.0 Total 38 465.36 39 988.91 4.0 (1) Sales of print-on-demand services through the EU Bookshop website, including single printed issues of the electronic Official Journal. (2) Amounts charged as ‘various’ correspond to shipment fees for EU Bookshop priced orders as well as for the delivery of EU Bookshop free publications to countries outside the European Union Member States, candidate
countries and EFTA countries.
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Procurement and contracts
Table 32 Tender procedures concluded (EUR)
Number of procedures Number of contracts or amendments signed Total amount
Open procedures 9 18 24 184 925 Negotiated procedures (> EUR 60 000) 3 1 90 000 Negotiated procedures (< EUR 60 000) 2 2 50 500 Restricted procedures 0 0 0 Procedures with relaunching of competition 9 8 935 351 Other procedures (1) 7 7 3 756 419 Total 30 36 29 017 195 (1) Budgetary increase and amendments.
Table 33 Contract management (EUR)
2017 2018 Change 2018/2017 (%) New contracts established (1) 50 20 - 60.0 Non-renewal / termination 13 7 - 46.2 Amendments to existing contracts established of which: 105 47 - 55.2
Negotiated procedures 39 8 - 79.5 Other amendments 66 38 - 42.4 Other EU services amendments 0 1 —
(1) Does not take into account: contracts concluded based on other Commission directorates-general framework contracts, specific contracts, low value contracts, order forms.
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Graphs Graph 1 Evolution of staff from 1969 onwards
Graph 2 Evolution of the Official Journal production from 1952 onwards
1973enlargement DK / IE / UK
1981enlargement
EL
1986enlargement
ES / PT
1993transfer
Eurobases
1995enlargement
AT / FI / SE2004
enlargementCZ / EE / CY / LV / LT / HU /
MT / PL / SI / SK
2005transferCORDIS
2007enlargement
BG / RO
2010transfer
Trans-JAI
2012Tax
2013 Tax +enlargement
HR2014-2017
Tax
2018 Transfer synergy + tax
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
46
79
11
20
2324
0
500.000
1.000.000
1.500.000
2.000.000
2.500.000
Number of OJ L/C pages Number of linguistic versions
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Graph 3 EUR-Lex consultation figures
Graph 4 TED consultation figures
17 972 05917 814 034
20 278 194
18 424 807
20 526 784
19 164 80017 924 372
16 014 299
18 237 550
22 081 48521 420 736
16 246 027
4 419 351
4 434 344
5 024 1954 689 787
5 661 8595 058 456
4 515 4053 939 264
4 525 8985 668 4235 783 183
4 353 035
0
5 000 000
10 000 000
15 000 000
20 000 000
25 000 000
0
5 000 000
10 000 000
15 000 000
20 000 000
25 000 000
Pages consulted Visits
3 689 3833 531 309
4 012 831
3 576 9293 358 045
3 217 417
3 650 635
3 580 4173 335 885
4 115 914
3 704 080 3 674 759
45 278 45 83852 783
45 166 45 443 49 327 49 642 48 210 44 34955 345 47 826 49 294
0
50 000
100 000
150 000
200 000
250 000
0
1 000 000
2 000 000
3 000 000
4 000 000
5 000 000
Notices consulted Notices published
Publications Office
76
Graph 5 OP Portal consultation figures
Graph 6 EU Open Data Portal consultation figures
1 743 446 1 765 8491 910 610
1 707 3101 787 755
1 836 788
1 696 843
1 544 462
1 811 600
2 249 896 2 242 682
1 701 476
545 902 554 029
616 413571 601
617 449594 794
545 168485 328
569 845
703 009 707 024
528 125
0
200 000
400 000
600 000
800 000
1 000 000
400 000
800 000
1 200 000
1 600 000
2 000 000
2 400 000
Pages consulted Visits
173 674 171 663
191 633
215 316217 055
197 019
215 389
191 231
178 803
237 387 248 543
192 406
59 728 57 661
68 803 66 804 68 97963 311 65 262 63 007 64 145
86 373 87 984
65 517
0
40 000
80 000
120 000
160 000
200 000
80 000
120 000
160 000
200 000
240 000
280 000
Pages consulted Visits
Annual Management Report 2018
77
Graph 7 CORDIS consultation figures
1 311 388
1 065 6401 122 424
1 011 481
1 109 681
1 221 532
1 384 691
1 030 3061 099 713
1 357 380 1 411 670
966 549
311 522 293 773 303 218 303 844 336 258378 780 358 830 338 325 366 348
451 341 466 160
319 770
0
300 000
600 000
900 000
1 200 000
1 500 000
0
300 000
600 000
900 000
1 200 000
1 500 000
Pages consulted Visits
Publications Office
78
Annex IV: Financial statements
2018 2017 Balance sheet Assets 7 223 076 13 630 372
Non-current assets 1 983 923 6 646 879 1. Intangible assets 1 822 458 3 850 698 2. Property, plant and equipment 161 465 2 796 181 Current assets 5 239 153 6 983 493 3. Inventories 4 933 388 6 904 961 4. Receivables 289 239 63 825 5. Cash and cash equivalents 16 527 14 707
Liabilities (2 383 293) (2 885 213) Non-current liabilities (1 239 134) (1 804 818) 6. Long-term provisions (121 142) (121 142) 7. Long-term payables (1 117 992) (1 683 676) Current liabilities (1 144 159) (1 080 395) 8. Payables (1 144 159) (1 080 395)
Net assets 4 839 783 10 745 159 9. Net assets 4 839 783 10 745 159
Statement of financial performance
10. Other operating revenue 5 610 207 9 008 269 Sales of publications 27 899 21 139 Other revenue 226 976 411 794 Revenue with other consolidated entities 5 333 695 10 713 504 Internal Commission revenue 522 432 518 751 Internal Commission expenses (500 794) (2 656 919)
11. Administrative expenses (35 199 196) (36 173 637) Staff expenses 387 776 706 594 Fixed asset-related expenses (3 977 430) (2 402 229) Buildings expenses (9 117) (10 789) Publications expenses (13 111 246) (15 342 498) Other administrative expenses (18 404 086) (18 866 485) Expenses with other consolidated entities (85 094) (258 230)
12. Operating expenses (17 514 896) (19 364 955) Operational expenses (15 543 323) (18 300 553) Movements on stock (1 971 573) (1 064 402) Provision for other liabilities 0 0
13. Financial operations (87 441) (102 448) Financial revenue (242) 242 Financial expenses (87 199) (102 690) Write-down receivables 0 0
Off-balance sheet
Contingent assets 2 208 500 3 214 000 14. Guarantees received 2 208 500 3 214 000 Contingent liabilities (253 618) (365 270) 15. Commitments 0 0 16. Amounts related to open legal cases (141 555) (141 555) 17. Operating lease commitments (111 663) (223 715)
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Explanatory notes The annual accounts of the Publications Office are prepared according to the European Commission’s Accounting Rules which are in line with the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) based on accrual accounting principles. The annual accounts are directly extracted from ABAC-SAP, the centralised accrual accounting system of the Commission.
These financial statements are identical to those presented in the Office’s Annual Activity Report, except for the statement of financial performance, which is more detailed in these statements. Furthermore, assets and liabilities in the balance sheet are not equal because these form part of the Commission’s balance sheet, where assets and liabilities do balance.
From 2016, the Office is subject to a light cut-off procedure which is applicable to Commission’s directorates-general as formally identified by the Commission’s Accounting Officer. Therefore the accounting situation presented in the balance sheet and in the statement of financial performance does not include the accruals and deferrals calculated centrally by the services of the Accounting Officer.
The Office’s accounts form part of the 2018 provisional annual accounts of both the Commission and the European Union. The amounts are still subject to audit by the European Court of Auditors.
Internal control systems Based on an annually revised risk assessment and accounting quality overview, the Financial Planning and Accounting Section of the Office’s Finance Unit drafts an accounting revision plan. This plan contains the checks and measures that will be undertaken to verify the quality of the accounting data for each item in the balance sheet, the statement of financial performance and the off balance sheet report. Verifications are performed all throughout the year in order to provide reasonable assurance of correct recording of transactions.
Balance sheet 1. Intangible assets
This section includes the capitalisation of Office’s large scale IT projects exceeding the EUR 2 million threshold for capitalisation of internally generated intangible assets. There were no new IT projects exceeding this threshold and therefore there was no capitalisation of intangible assets.
However, in the past the threshold was EUR 0.5 million therefore four Office’s IT applications are still recognised as intangible assets, namely new EUR-Lex and Cellar in 2012, Metaconv and CORDIS ICA.3 in 2014.
A straight line depreciation method is applied monthly on the Office’s intangible assets. The yearly depreciation rates, based on the estimated lifetime, are:
10 % for new EUR-Lex and Metaconv; 12.5 % for Cellar; 16.7 % for CORDIS ICA.3.
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During the year 2018, licences and software bought off-the-shelf were transferred to DG Informatics in the framework of the ‘OP IT infrastructure consolidation convention’. The impact in gross value amounts to EUR 4.3 million and EUR 1.0 million in net value.
A further decrease of EUR 1.0 million is explained by depreciation up to September.
2. Property, plant and equipment
This represents the net value of tangible fixed assets such as plant, machinery, equipment and furniture. It is foreseen that the management of these assets will be transferred to OIL in 2019.
Computer hardware were transferred to DG Informatics in 2018 in the framework of the ‘OP IT infrastructure consolidation convention’. The impact in gross value amounts to EUR 14.6 million and EUR 2.5 million in net value. Before the transfer, an analysis was performed and EUR 2.1 million (gross value) of obsolete material were written off.
While the assets part of hardware leases was already transferred as at end 2018, the debt part will be transferred during the first quarter of 2019 and the credits will be made available to DG Informatics to reimburse the residual debt.
Monthly straight line depreciation is applied, based on a rate that varies by asset type. The yearly depreciation rates are:
12.5 %: plant, machinery and most equipment; 10 %: office furniture.
The table hereunder shows the 2018 movements related to tangible and intangible fixed assets.
Fixed assets movements (EUR)
Item Computer software
Financial leasing intangible
assets
Plant, machinery and
equipment
Furniture and rolling
stock
Computer hardware
Other fixtures and
fittings
Financial leasing
hardware Total
A. Acquisition value Previous year-end 7 910 929 1 751 975 468 315 1 494 103 11 877 760 360 283 4 123 862 27 987 227 Changes during the year Acquisitions during the year 0 0 19 363 0 0 0 504 786 524 149 Disposal and withdrawals 0 0 -5 909 -128 825 -2 108 191 -6 693 0 -2 249 618 Transfers to DG Informatics -2 530 001 -1 751 975 0 -8 454 -9 768 737 -242 819 -4 628 648 -18 930 633 Other 23 775 1 560 25 335 Year-end 5 380 929 0 481 770 1 380 599 2 392 110 771 0 7 331 125 B. Depreciation and value adjustments Previous year-end -5 195 106 -617 099 -392 393 -1 387 217 -10 909 239 -336 949 -2 502 344 -21 340 347 Changes during the year Amortisation for the year -652 616 -336 772 -19 580 -30 146 -2 816 0 -620 299 -1 662 228 Disposal and withdrawals 0 0 5 909 118 226 2 108 191 6 693 0 2 239 019 Transfers to DG Informatics 2 289 251 953 871 0 4 793 8 803 032 219 485 3 122 643 15 393 075 Other -495 -1 560 -2 055 Year-end -3 558 471 0 -406 064 -1 294 839 -2 391 -110 771 0 -5 370 481 Net book value (A+B) 1 822 458 0 75 706 85 759 0 0 0 1 983 924
Annual Management Report 2018
81
3. Inventories
The gross value of all free and priced publications in stock, held and declared by the Office on behalf of all Commission directorates-general and institutions, is EUR 6 351 193. The impairment value is EUR 1 453 305. The net value is therefore EUR 4 897 888 (EUR 6 876 977 as at end 2017).
Gross amount of the publications produced and still held in stock at year-end are valued at the historical cost per kilo. The cost per kilo estimated in 2018 is EUR 4.74 compared to EUR 6.68 in 2017. This is due to the new contract with more competitive prices. This has a major impact on the net value.
Indeed, since 2015, a cost-per-kilo value was calculated based on a revised methodology to improve the representativeness of the sample by stratifying the population by type of publication and by extending the sample size.
Since 99.6 % of the publications held in stock relate to free publications, the IPSAS rule for free publications was applied to calculate the net value, with stocks valued at the lower of (production) cost and current replacement cost.
The impairment is the difference between the gross and the net value.
The ageing of the 12.4 million items in stock is as follows:
Year of origin % quantity stock Before 2014 12.9 % 2014 8.0 % 2015 28.1 % 2016 7.2 % 2017 20.7 % 2018 23.0 % Total stock 100.0 %
No specific impairment for obsolescence was applied, especially since storage costs are fully charged back to author services. Therefore, there is an incentive not to keep obsolete publications and items in stock can be considered useful.
The stock of materials and supplies consumed in the print shop has a value of EUR 35 500 at 31 December 2018.
The table hereunder summarizes the stock situation:
Acquisition value Value reduction Net 31.12.2018 Net 31.12.2017 Production material 35 500 0 35 500 27 984 Publications and goods for resale 6 351 193 -1 453 305 4 897 888 6 876 977 Total 6 386 693 -1 453 305 4 933 388 6 904 961
4. Receivables
This section includes receivables from other institutions, agencies and Commission directorates-general related to recovery orders for production, storage and dissemination of the publications.
The increase in receivables in 2018 when compared with 2017 is mainly due to the amounts of not yet cashed recovery orders with a maturity date in the beginning of 2019.
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5. Cash and cash equivalents
This section includes the balances of current bank accounts managed by the Office for its sales activity. According to the procedures in place, the Office announces and pays back the revenue from publications collected on behalf of Commission directorates-general, institutions and agencies in January and October.
6. Long-term provisions
This section relates to a provision created in 2012 for one open legal case with a likely loss (>50 % probability) estimated at EUR 121 142.
7. Long-term payables
This section relates to the long-term debt for 13 ongoing financial leases.
While the assets part of hardware leases was already transferred as at end 2018, the debt part will be transferred during the first quarter of 2019 and the credits will be made available to DG Informatics to reimburse the residual debt.
The following table provides details on financial leases.
Financial leasing of the Office Duration Initial gross
value
Long-term payables as at
31.12.2018
Description Reception date
Years EUR EUR
COMLIN – LEASING VMAX 2 – EUFO 1/04/2015 5 899 587 49 122 VTL-Deduplication Data Domain 1/04/2015 4 252 211 0 VTL-Deduplication Data Domain 1/04/2015 4 252 211 0 COMLIN –LEASING VMAX 2 – MER 1/04/2015 5 899 587 49 122 LEASING UPGRADE PROTECTPOINT (EUFO) 1/03/2016 5 117 240 24 250 Leasing upgrade PROTECTPOINT (Mercier) 1/03/2016 5 117 240 24 250 LEASING UPGRADE VMAX3E (EUFO) 1/04/2016 5 758 747 156 874 LEASING UPGRADE VMAX3E (Mercier) 1/04/2016 5 758 747 156 874 SERVEURS INFORMATIQUES DD9300 1/04/2017 5 384 857 156 293 SERVEURS INFORMATIQUES DD9300 1/04/2017 5 384 857 156 293 NAS FILER EMC ISILON (Mercier) 1/05/2018 5 203 045 137 934 NAS FILER EMC ISILON (EUFO) 1/05/2018 5 203 045 137 934 30 CANON COPIERS 20/04/2018 5 98 697 69 046 Total 5 330 071 1 117 992
8. Payables
This section includes:
short-term debt for financial leasing of IT equipment and software (EUR 990 645); invoices received and to be paid as at 31 December 2018 (EUR 153 514).
9. Net assets
The Publications Office’s balance sheet represents only the assets and liabilities that are under the control of its Director-General. The balance presented is therefore not in equilibrium. Amounts such as cash held in the Commission’s bank accounts are not included in the Office’s accounts since these are managed centrally by DG Budget, and appear in its balance sheet.
Annual Management Report 2018
83
Statement of financial performance
10. Other operating revenue
This section includes:
Sales of publications. These are the sales for which the Office is the beneficiary, print on demand and reimbursement of postage cost. The yearly income on behalf of the Publications Office increased slightly due to the print-on-demand printing (+ EUR 4 500);
Other revenue. These comprise: ‒ the value of recovery orders for storage, dissemination and printing costs issued to
bodies which are not included in the consolidation exercise of the Commission (EUR 146 158) is similar to the amount recorded during the previous year;
‒ the value of liquidated damages applied to contractors (EUR 80 819); ‒ the increase in stock’s impairment from year-end 2017 to year-end 2018 was recorded
as expenses and therefore no amount was recorded under this section; Revenue with other consolidated entities. The amount of EUR 5 333 695 originates
mainly from the advance recovery orders issued to the institutions (EUR 3.1 million), and also from the recovery of expenses for storage, dissemination (EUR 1.6 million) and production of publications charged to agencies. The decrease of EUR 5.4 million in 2018 is due to indirect cost of the Official Journal L and C production being included in the Office’s budget and therefore no recovery orders are issued anymore. In the framework of the light cut-off procedure, the charges paid in advance by the institutions are not recorded anymore. The deferred income would amount to EUR 1.2 million in 2018 and reduce the revenue accordingly. The recovery orders for distribution and storage expenses are similar to those of 2017.
Internal Commission revenue. These comprise revenue for storage and dissemination and to a lesser extent the production of the Office’s print shop charged to Commission directorates-general;
Internal Commission expenses. These comprise EUR 2.1 million of expenses related to DG Informatics in 2017 for pre financing IT services were recorded. These are not included anymore in 2018 as the budgets were made available by the Office directly to DG Informatics, hence the decrease of EUR 2.1 million.
11. Administrative expenses
Administrative expenses include also expenditure on budget items for which the Office received a sub/co-delegation. It does not include expenses on Office budget items managed by other Commission services, i.e. the Paymaster Office (PMO), OIL, OIB, DG Human Resources and Security and DG Informatics.
Staff expenses. Staff salaries are not included in the Office’s statement of financial performance as accounting reporting on this falls within the responsibility of PMO. However, this section includes a transfer representing estimated AD/AST internal staff costs linked to IT projects developments;
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Fixed assets related expenses. This represents the amount of the annual depreciation of tangible and intangible fixed assets and other expenses related to fixed assets; the increase is due to additional depreciation recorded during the transfer of leases to DG Informatics;
Buildings expenses. Since 2014, these expenses are managed by OIL. The amount paid by the Office is therefore marginal;
Publications expenses. This comprises the following types of administrative expenses: storage and dissemination, correction, printing, multimedia production, archiving of electronic documents. The decrease 2018/2017 amounted to EUR 2.2 million. A new contract for publications with more competitive prices entered into force in 2018, hence a reduction of cost. To a lesser extent, distribution and proofreading costs also decreased. This is due to a reduction of the activities for dissemination and of the activities outsourced for proofreading;
Other administrative expenses. The main expenses are as follows: ‒ EUR 9 964 547 concern the cost of Office supplies and maintenance; ‒ EUR 882 782 concern external and internal costs for development of IT projects,
which have not been capitalised; ‒ EUR 6 992 870 concern maintenance of IT applications; ‒ the remaining balance concerns IT research (EUR 320 446), operating leases, and
other expenses; Expenses with other consolidated entities include amounts paid to the European
Parliament for printing work. In the past, the Court of Justice invoiced proofreading services, which are currently carried out by the Office.
12. Operating expenses
Operational expenses. This represents expenses (except expenses for IT projects) on operational budget lines: CORDIS, OJ S, pilot projects and preparatory actions (PublicAccess.eu, Linked Open Data in European public administration) and the charges for publications on sub/co-delegations on operational budget lines. The decrease of EUR 2.7 million is mainly due to a reduction of expenses in OJ S (– EUR 1.6 million of which EUR 0.7 million for the set-up of the contract in 2017) and also to CORDIS and DG Communication publications (– EUR 0.5 million each);
Movements of stock. This represents the impact of the movements of stock. It is the decrease in gross value of stock between 31 December 2017 and 31 December 2018. Due to the lower cost of the new publications stored, the difference in gross value of stock is more significant;
Provision for other liabilities. No further provision was considered necessary for the pending legal case.
13. Financial operations
Financial revenue. The negative amount represents the reversal of the recording of 2018 in commercial accounting. Indeed, no interests were received on the bank account these two last years, and the bank fees are now recognised as soon as they occur as a debt due by the author services;
Financial expenses. The amount represents interest paid on the 2018 instalments for the financial lease of IT material. No penalties were paid by the Office for payment delays.
Annual Management Report 2018
85
Off-balance sheet
14. Guarantees received
This represents bank performance guarantees received from contractors.
Following the policy of restricting the use of bank performance guarantees, only one new performance guarantee was demanded for the OJ contract.
15. Commitments
Following the light cut-off procedure for the non-large Commission directorates-general, the remaining share of the outstanding commitments (reste-à-liquider – RAL) as at 31 December is now recorded at DG Budget level.
16. Amounts related to open legal cases
This represents potential liabilities related to pending legal cases with a probability of loss between 20 % and 50 %. Only one legal case is still pending as at the end of 2018.
17. Operating lease commitments
This represents the amount of outstanding legal commitments related to operational leases. The management of cars was transferred to OIL. Therefore, only copy machine leases are now included in this section.
Operating lease commitments (EUR)
Description Charges still to be paid Total charges to be paid < 1 year 1‒5 years > 5 years
Buildings 0 0 0 0 Cars 0 0 0 0 Copy machines 52 437 59 226 0 111 663 Total 52 437 59 226 0 111 663
Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2019
© European Union, 2019
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