Context
The Once-Only Principle means that citizens and businesses only need to submit their data to public authorities once if they want to receive various public services. Data-sharing procedures then enable the authorities to reuse this data, provided that the data subjects have given their consent. This can only work if it is a straightforward matter for authorities to share data with each other.
In practice, there are multiple challenges that make data sharing difficult. Currently, each authority digitises its own services; there is no joint strategy or uniform IT standards. This gives rise to many individual working groups and thus often leads to duplication of effort and high costs for authorities. For this reason, interoperable solutions are necessary for the efficient digitisation of public services and the implementation of the Once-Only Principle.
Objectives
The project therefore deals with five main objectives in different fields of interoperability. The first field is semantic interoperability, which means that a given term is always used with the same meaning, and is thus interoperable across different legal areas. The second field is structural interoperability, with the objective to harmonise IT standards or make the various IT standards compatible with each other. The third field is legal interoperability, to ensure that the law and the digitisation process can work hand in hand to advance the Once-Only approach. Besides these technical forms of interoperability, the fourth and fifth fields, organisational and cultural interoperability, must not be overlooked.
Implementation
To launch this project, the Ministry of Finance created the ‘Once-Only Marketplace’ and the corresponding ‘Once-Only Network’. These were created as a first point of contact for public authority staff, providing them with a non-hierarchical environment in which they could ask questions, make comments and contribute novel ideas for the implementation of Once-Only.
Regular network meetings, face-to-face and virtual, are held. At these meetings, representatives of the various authorities have the opportunity to give talks or discuss issues. As Once-Only can only work with the opinions of users, citizens and businesses are directly involved from the very beginning and are asked about their problems, expectations or ideas for an efficient and user-friendly public administration. This allows a quick response to new insights and requests for change. In nine months, the network expanded from 100 to 900 people, mainly thanks to the organisation of workshops and network meetings.