Supporting the EU Member States in advancing reforms and innovation
When governments across Europe try to modernise, the challenge is rarely that they lack ambition or resources. More often, what is missing is the space to think carefully before acting – to understand what the actual problem is, what has already been tried elsewhere, and who inside the administration will need to carry the change forward.
The European Union’s Technical Support Instrument (TSI) was built around exactly that gap: not funding, but structured expert support, delivered at the moment when a reform is still being designed.
In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, recorded around Europe Day, we speak with Florian Hauser, Deputy Head of Unit for Public Administration at SG REFORM – the European Commission’s Task Force for reforms and investment – and with Hannes Astok, Executive Director of the e-Governance Academy (eGA), which has been working closely with the TSI across a growing portfolio of themes in recent years.
Is it IT, or is it actually governance?
Asked to name a project that stayed with him, Hauser does not reach for a technology case. He describes Barnahús – a concept originating in Iceland that centres all services around a child victim of crime, rather than making the child navigate each institution separately. Police, judiciary, social services, and psychological support: instead of operating in silos and re-interviewing the child at each stage, they coordinate and come to the child. TSI supported its introduction in Slovenia, and when other countries took notice, it spread to Spain and Ireland. “You put the user at the centre, and it shows that you don’t necessarily need to have a digital tool to do that,” Hauser says.
It reframes what the TSI is actually for. The underlying mission is governance reform, and, as Hauser puts it later in the conversation, “Often in digital transformation we encounter governance problems, dressed as an IT problem.” Astok makes the same observation from a delivery perspective. “Changing existing manners of how government is functioning – this is the hardest part. Not the technology implementation by itself.”
Paper-based workflows in a single country can be efficient. However, they become insufficient the moment cross-border services and European interoperability come into play. “When we are speaking about cross-border services and broadening Europe as a one service area, it doesn’t help us anymore if we are efficient on paper only in one country.” Redesigning what has worked for decades requires, Astok notes, “very much leadership inside the government, at many levels, to make this change actually happen.”
The value in receiving and exchanging expertise
Member States involved in TSI projects get structured support for thinking and planning before implementation begins. “In traditional government, unfortunately, there are usually pretty few funds available for thinking, and everyone wants to run immediately to implementation,” Astok says. The instrument creates space for this analysis, for learning from peers, for mapping what has already been done elsewhere. eGA is currently delivering projects on NIS2 implementationwith NÚKIB in Czechia, AI readiness for municipalities with Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and Riga (Latvia), data governance with National Statistical Institutes of Croatia, Estonia, Germany, and the Netherlands through the Implement DGA project, and digital justice reform with the National Courts Administration of the Republic of Lithuania– each drawing on a mix of Estonian experience and wider European and eGA practice.
When eGA worked with the Belgian justice system on its digitisation blueprint, the value was not in importing the Estonian model wholesale. “What is done in Estonia, it’s done already ten, fifteen years ago. So, what can we do with the latest technology? Can we inspire the beneficiary government to do something that is even better?”. The process works in two directions, Astok notes. “On one hand, ask what is the actual need of the beneficiary. On the other hand, also see what has been done already elsewhere, and inspire the beneficiaries through that.”
This is also why the choice of partner matters beyond technical competence. “eGA is not just any other expert consultancy,” Hauser adds. “It’s also a peer, because these are people with deep knowledge of how things really work in a country.”
Expertise has limits, though, and they are worth naming. It can clarify what needs to happen and how, but it cannot substitute for political will. “It’s called Technical Support Instrument, and that’s what it is, and that’s great,” Hauser says. “But any reform is not only technical. In any organisation, you have winners and losers of reforms. For example, even a person who does not like to change.” TSI projects now routinely begin with a stakeholder analysis that maps “who can support the change and who can block it,” because the human dimensions of reform are at least as consequential as the technical ones.
When reforms land and when they don’t
Ownership is the first variable in whether TSI support produces lasting change, but not all ownership is equal. A request can come from a small department or be championed by a single minister who then leaves office. “We recently had a project promoted very much by one minister, but then the minister changed, and now the support for the reform is much lower.” A broad coalition is needed from the start: people who feel the operational pain the reform is meant to address, not just a political sponsor at the top. “You should want to solve an operational problem, and you have to feel that pain, and that pain has to be big enough to be really felt,” Hauser says.
Astok recognises the pattern from eGA’s project experience. Some administrations arrive as genuine co-owners of the process, contributing their own resources and treating the blueprint as something they will have to live with. Others treat the external partner as a contractor. “Okay, your consultants do everything and come back after a few months with results.” But the distinction matters, because the final product – a work plan, an architecture, an implementation roadmap – only travels into the next phase if people are invested in what it says. “The more you are involved in the current stages, the easier it is for you to move forward with actual implementation.”
Timelines vary significantly depending on the scope: implementing the NIS2 Directive in a specific country can move quickly – “basically, after the end of a project, there might be six months, and everything is already implemented”. While digitising an entire justice system is a matter entirely different. “Even the planning takes probably a year, and the full implementation may take a decade,” Astok says.
But where deadlines exist, they do help. EU legislation provides them, and the NIS2 Directive, the Data Governance Act, and the AI Act each create a compliance timeline that functions as an external forcing mechanism. Hauser is direct: “Don’t underestimate that the reform implementation triggers some legal sanction. It’s an unfortunate framing, but it is also worth it.” Quick wins help too – “a prototype or a certain architecture that delivers something tangible” – because the full reform may take years, and momentum needs to be maintained across that distance.
The ‘boring’ middle layer
Hauser closes with what he calls a recipe for success:
- the handover from project to national ownership,
- the translation from legal base to operational reality,
- the monitoring systems needed to track outcomes rather than outputs.
“We too often say, ‘Oh, we did a great output, we have a great analysis’. But what is the actual outcome in terms of better services, reduced process times, and ultimately increased competitiveness?” Governments that have invested heavily in digital transformation often find, a few years in, that the limiting factor was never the flagship applications. It was the layer underneath: register integration, interoperability, security operations, service standards.
“Don’t forget the ‘boring’ middle layer of the digital state,” Hauser says. “It’s not glamorous, but it’s necessary.” What determines whether transformation moves forward is less the programme than the capacity it tries to build: senior implementation teams with genuine ownership, accountable for outcomes. “Not somebody doing this as a hobby,” as Hauser puts it. “It’s a full-time job.”
This podcast episode and podcast blog have been prepared within the framework of the projects Implementing the NIS2 Directive in Czechia, AI-ready Municipalities, Lithuanian eJustice: Automation of routine tasks in judicial proceedings, Implement DGA, supported by the European Union. The information and views set out herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union or its institutions.
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