Italy does the same: https://github.com/pagopa/io-app
This is the official government app (you can get benefits, pay taxes, etc...), downloaded by 30+ million citizens, stack is React Native + Typescript
This is the official government app (you can get benefits, pay taxes, etc...), downloaded by 30+ million citizens, stack is React Native + Typescript
Imagine a single European rail service (not Euro rail where you can buy a single ticket that will make you take Dutch train, and then connect on a German train, and then on an Austrian train, and if you miss a connection, good luck figuring out your replacement..)
in general the EU strategy has been to agree common rules and standards. But there are also examples of common infrastructure, e.g. the Euro bills
it will be interesting to see how this might develop for software related to public institutions
Unless you reach an economic moment where you can pay the same to a policeman in Sweden and a policeman in Greece there is never going to be a socioeconomic identity that would allow you to aggregate all these people in some sort of federation police force. Same for rail, same for most anything where there is a cost or expense or transaction.
The diversity of systems reflects a diversity of arbitrage. Brute forcing that into a single entity or federal body is ivory tower thinking.
Why?
Localized pay has been a thing for literally centuries, across a wide swath of fields.
This is not about standardized pay, but about resource sharing.
Imagine a study about an uptick in a certain type of crime. Easier on one big force, than 20 little ones.
But, yeah not that we're wild about international train travel--that's a sore spot for sure. But generally we view the differences as a kind of richness and less of an inconvenience.
I think you misunderstand the history of the EU project: its goal is what you describe, but it must be balanced with respecting the autonomy of each individual nation inside the union. It can only work if all involved governments agree to do it. Which is an incredibly difficult thing to achieve.
What we have now is the progress we have managed to make so far. If it does not appear like much, well, you should have seen what things were like before the EU, especially regarding red tape.
Even if this is done under the umbrella of an EU institution, the politics work the same way except now every other country is trying all kinds of maneuvers in an attempts to retain as much of the control as possible.
In the usual company there is a reasonably clear hierarchy, if someone doesn't fall in line some superior dons the big boots and drop kicks them all the way past the company parking lot without some democratic process behind it. Each level is accountable to the higher one.
At country level there's no such thing. It more like a lot of different companies sometimes reluctantly agreeing to work together, while not owing each other anything, and being subjected to the whims of the people back home (managers and citizens). There is no true hierarchy, no supreme authority, the accountability isn't towards the committee but towards superiors "back home" to get specific interests pushed. And if they don't make the cut you can always pack up your toys and go, maybe even turn it into a win back home ("we retain full control"). You want to look good for the managers and the citizens at home, not the ones in the committee. National pride, ego, politics on the world stage are very strong factors at play. If there is some obligation to contribute it also had to come democratically in a process to which your country participated.
These aren't power plays inside a company, they are the power plays between big companies. Except with a lot of nationalistic aspects and actual politics sprinkled in. And you can't even buy cooperation like in a commercial case.
So calling them "power games" is correct in principle but not at all useful to gauge the difference in scale in the 2 cases.
For example, in Ukraine used closed source software, and only war (because censorship), slightly slowed stream of scandal publications about bugs and vulnerabilities.
1. receiving payment request for car tickets that you can pay right away with the credit card you saved in the app 2. receiving pending tax payments for local and national taxes that, again you can pay right away in the app 3. it was used for the national cashback program as a mean to enroll citizens, register the payment cards that could be used to accumulate points, setup banking details to get the prizes, etc... 4. distribute several government incentives (e.g. holiday bonus, bonus for young citizens, etc...)
After I left the project, the team was working on implementing a full digital signature solution that could be used to sign official requests to the public administration and they were also working on supporting legally valid communications from the government (vs just informational).