Public service
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A (European) public service comprises any public sector service (exposed to a cross-border dimension) and supplied by public administrations, either to one another or to businesses and citizens in the Union.

A Public Service is a mandatory or discretionary set of acts performed, or able to be performed, by or on behalf of a public organisation. Services may be for the benefit of an individual, a business, or other public authority, or groups of any of these. The capacity to act exists whether it is used or not, and the term 'benefit' may apply in the sense of enabling the fulfilment of an obligation.

The European Interoperability Framework defines a European public services as any service provided by public administrations in Europe, or by other organisations on their behalf, to businesses, citizens or others public administrations. It considers the Public Service as the central element around which interoperabilty needs to be ensured.

Public service – activities that public authorities identify as being of particular importance to citizens (A2C), businesses (A2B) and public administrations (A2A) and that would not be supplied (or would be supplied under different conditions) if there was no public intervention.

Public service is an architectural building block of the European Interoperability Reference Architecture at the Organisational interoperability layer of the European Interoperability Framework.

Sources and further reading: EIF, ISA2 Core Vocabularies, IMM
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:2c2f2554-0faf-11e7-8a35-01aa75ed71a1.0017.02/DOC_3&format=PDF
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/catalogue/distribution/cpsv-ap-specification-v20-pdf
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/imm_guideline_1.pdf
https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/actions/assessing-progress-being-made-towards-interoperability_en

Source: European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA version 3) (url) (with information on the 3rd release at the website of the ISA² - Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens).