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Digital Sovereignty by Design: Building Resilient EU Forms Infrastructure
European institutions can advance digital sovereignty and resilient public services by modernising forms infrastructure with secure, interoperable, and automated digital workflows.
For European institutions and agencies, digital forms are the primary interface for interinstitutional collaboration, regulatory workflows and cross-border administrative services. Every grant request, compliance declaration or administrative procedure starts with a form, making its quality essential to public trust and operational efficiency.
As the European public sector accelerates its digital transformation, the challenge is to build a sovereign, interoperable and resilient digital infrastructure that enables secure, accessible and compliant public services across the EU.
During a recent webinar hosted by Adobe and Reply, experts discussed how EU institutions can modernise legacy forms using Adobe Experience Manager Forms while supporting key European priorities such as digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, interoperability and operational resilience.
Why forms infrastructure has become strategic for Europe?
Forms and documents remain the front door to public administration, yet many organisations still rely on fragmented workflows, static PDFs and manual processes that reduce efficiency and increase the risk of errors.
Within the EU regulatory framework, institutions must comply with GDPR, eIDAS, accessibility and interoperability requirements while ensuring the secure handling of sensitive data across borders.
This makes digital sovereignty a strategic priority. European institutions need full control over how data is processed, stored and accessed, making data residency, governance and trust essential elements of modern digital services.
At the same time, interoperable infrastructure is critical to enable secure information exchange between agencies, Member States and backend systems while maintaining compliance and operational resilience.
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From paper-based administration to resilient digital services
The webinar highlighted a large-scale transformation initiative delivered by Reply for a major Italian government agency responsible for worker protection and occupational injury management. The organisation serves millions of workers and more than one million companies while managing billions of euros in contributions and benefits every year.
The agency faced many of the challenges familiar across the European public sector. Existing processes relied heavily on paper forms, fragmented document workflows and repetitive manual data entry. Users were required to download, print and complete documents manually before resubmitting them through disconnected administrative channels. Internally, staff frequently had to re-enter information into multiple systems, increasing the risk of errors, delays and operational inefficiencies.
To address these issues, the organisation launched a broad digital transformation initiative based on Adobe Experience Manager Forms. The project focused on replacing static PDFs with intelligent, guided digital forms capable of delivering a more intuitive and user-centric experience.
The transformation introduced adaptive web forms that dynamically display only relevant fields based on user interaction. Prefill capabilities allowed data to be automatically populated from existing systems, significantly reducing repetitive input and administrative tasks. Users were also given the ability to save drafts and resume submissions later, improving both usability and process
The agency also automated its end-to-end workflows, integrating backend systems to support submission handling, document generation, payment processes and data extraction. By connecting multiple systems into a unified digital ecosystem, the organisation reduced manual intervention while improving operational speed and data quality.
Standardisation as a foundation for resilience
One of the most important aspects of the project was the effort to standardise document generation across the organisation. Large public administrations often operate with numerous departments using different templates, tools and processes, creating fragmentation and inconsistent citizen experiences.
To solve this challenge, Reply implemented a centralised API-based document generation layer built on Adobe Experience Manager Forms. This created a unified framework allowing departments to generate, merge and manage documents using standardised templates and reusable components.
The result was a more coherent and resilient forms infrastructure capable of supporting thousands of interactions every month with improved reliability and reduced error rates. The standardised architecture also strengthened governance while making the agency’s services more recognisable and consistent for citizens.
Accessibility was another critical component of the transformation. The organisation developed reusable accessible components and compliant PDF templates aligned with the European Accessibility Act. This ensured that both digital forms and generated documents could be used inclusively across different user groups and devices.
The project ultimately delivered more than seventy adaptive forms and seventy fully accessible PDF templates while integrating over ten backend systems and more than twenty APIs into the organisation’s broader digital ecosystem. Process execution speeds increased significantly while document sizes were reduced dramatically, improving both operational efficiency and storage management.
Compliance, security and interoperability by design
A central theme throughout the webinar was the importance of embedding compliance and security directly into the architecture of digital services.
Adobe Experience Manager Forms was presented as a platform designed to support secure digital workflows while helping institutions meet the high standards expected within the European public sector. Features such as audit trails, secure integrations, data governance and eSignature support contribute to stronger compliance frameworks and more trusted citizen interactions.
The platform also supports the European objective of interoperability by enabling seamless data exchange between systems and institutions. Rather than requiring repeated submission of the same information across departments and workflows, integrated forms infrastructure allows administrations to capture data once and securely reuse it across operational processes.This “collect once, use many times” approach is increasingly aligned with Europe’s ambitions to simplify public administration while reducing administrative burden for both institutions and users.
Accelerating transformation with intelligent automation
Another key capability highlighted during the webinar was automated form conversion powered by Adobe Sensei AI. This functionality allows organisations to transform existing static PDFs into adaptive digital forms automatically, significantly accelerating modernisation programmes.
The system can recognise fields, tables, labels and structural elements within legacy documents before converting them into responsive digital forms that can be further enhanced with validation rules, integrations and dynamic workflows.
For EU institutions managing large inventories of legacy documents, this type of automation offers a major opportunity to modernise services rapidly without rebuilding every form manually from scratch.
The multilingual dimension is equally important in the European context. Adobe Experience Manager Forms supports translation workflows that enable institutions to deploy forms across multiple EU languages efficiently. This capability helps agencies scale services more rapidly while supporting inclusivity and accessibility across Member States.
Building the next generation of European public services
The broader message from Adobe and Reply was clear: Europe’s public sector must move beyond fragmented paper-heavy administration toward digital-by-default service delivery built on secure, interoperable and sovereign infrastructure.
Modern forms infrastructure is becoming a foundational element of resilient digital government strategies capable of supporting trusted interactions between institutions, agencies and Member States at scale.
As European agencies continue to navigate increasing regulatory complexity, cybersecurity pressures and growing citizen expectations, investment in sovereign digital infrastructure will play a defining role in the future of public service delivery.
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Comwrap Reply
Comwrap Reply specializes in launching cloud-native digital experience and e-commerce platforms based on Adobe Experience Cloud as well as Ibexa DXP. Comwrap Reply differentiates itself from Internet agencies and IT consultancies through a "cloud-native strategy." Standards-based integration in the cloud leads to short project lead times and lower overall project costs. Comwrap Reply's services include consulting, experience design, and system integration. www.comwrap.com