Following consultation and feedback from the Living-in.EU Tech Sub Group, the MIMs Plus Technical Specifications final version 4 was released today on the Living-in.EU website.

Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC), representing more than 150 sub-national governments, leads the development of the MIMs Plus, through the Living-in.EU Tech Sub Group. MIMs Plus are based on the principle of minimal interoperability and the ten OASC Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs).

MIMs Plus is an ongoing effort to develop a common list of minimal technical specifications for all sides of the market – buyers, suppliers and regulators – to achieve basic interoperability of data, systems, and platforms for cities and communities in Europe. MIMs Plus supports the evolution of critical digital infrastructure in the twin green-digital transformation such as data spaces, platforms and local digital twins. Aligned with the European Commission’s strategic priorities for building a “Europe fit for the Digital age”, and backed by industry, MIMs Plus de-risks investments on the local level while improving policy impact.

MIMs are the minimal but sufficient capabilities needed to achieve interoperability of data, systems, and services between buyers, suppliers and regulators across governance levels around the world. Because the mechanisms are based on an inclusive list of baselines and references, they take into account the different backgrounds of cities and communities and allow cities to achieve interoperability based on a minimal common ground.

Implementation can be different, as long as crucial interoperability points in any given technical architecture use the same interoperability mechanisms. The MIMs are vendor neutral and technology agnostic, meaning that anybody can use them and integrate them in existing systems and offerings, complementing existing standards and technologies.

MIMs Plus consists of the OASC MIMs and relevant European initiatives and specifications (Plus), such as EIF4SCC, INSPIRE, ISA2, CEF, EIP-SCC, ELISE, LORDI, DIGISER, and others. Minimal interoperability requires further integration based on local priorities and legacy, so governments and other stakeholders can add their preferred technical stacks, tools and management standards into operations and development, with an open-ended baseline that can evolve as needs arise.

The  MIMs Plus Technical Specification final version 4 includes:

• an updated list of the OASC MIMs, as approved by the OASC Council of Cities on 16 June 2021;
• input from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) aligning OASC MIM 7 (Geospatial information management) with the INSPIRE directive, which aims to create a European Union spatial data infrastructure to support the crafting of EU environmental policies and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment;
• input from OASC Sweden and the Swedish Living-in.EU signatories on ten principles supporting municipalities with IoT implementation (to be incorporated in deeper detail in the version 5.0 of the document);
• further links to the OASC MIM 4 (Personal Data Management) preliminary specification championed by Helsinki.

The next iteration of the MIMs Plus Technical Specifications (version 5), planned for Q4 2021, will incorporate wider structural changes to the document format to better present MIMs Plus. 

Do you have questions or feedback regarding the MIMs Plus Technical Specification version 4 or are you interested in contributing to the MIMs Plus Technical Specification version 5?  Please get in touch with Cornelia Dinca via cornelia@oascities.org for more information and opportunities to get involved.