Living-in.EU’s upscaling declaration initiative MIMs Plus’ 5th version has been finalized, with the focus on ensuring scalability, shareability and sustainability of outcomes, and protecting governments, the public, and other stakeholder groups against vendor lock-in and undue influence. MIMs Plus Initiative consists of minimal interoperability mechanisms (MIMs) and additional fundamental building blocks, such as European specifications, and it is created by Living-in.EU’s Technical sub-group. The sub-group consists of over 70 experts from various fields: technologies, standardization, advisory roles and innovation. The Living-in.EU declaration, which MIMs Plus is a part of, is based on six guiding principles, of which number five and six are especially relevant from a technical perspective: 

1. A citizen-centric approach;
2. A city-led approach at EU level;
3. The city as a citizen-driven and open innovation ecosystem;
4. Ethical and socially responsible access, use, sharing and management of data;
5. Technologies as key enablers;
6. Interoperable digital platforms based on open standards and technical specifications, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and shared data models.

MIMs Plus aims to build capacity on top of standards, mechanisms, services, guidelines, and tools that enable interoperability of data platforms for cities and communities, to mainstream the delivery of services with a strong positive local impact, while at the same time addressing overall European goals. It also introduces the current state of the art and gives recommendations for technical specifications. 

The MIMs Plus document itself consists of two parts: (1) an introduction and background and (2) the actual specifications. The structure of the specifications follows the framework of the OASC Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs), and then adds relevant European specifications and initiatives (Plus). 

Read the full MIMs Plus document here