Deliverable 1.1 provides vision of the once-only principle as well as key enablers and barriers

By kessmeyer

Under the lead of the University of Koblenz Landau, SCOOP4C has published its Deliverable 1.1 'Vision of the once-only principle for citizens, including key enablers and major barriers'. The study outlines the vision of the once-only principle as well as a list of barriers and enablers of once-only implementations, which were deliberated and compiled by all project partners, steering board members and the SCOOP4C stakeholder community. 

The vision developed for the once-only principle has taken the vision and guidelines set forth by the European Union through the eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 into consideration and proposes: 

"By 2020, the once-only principle (OOP) has become a centrepiece of public administration with a clear commitment to transparency, privacy, and data protection. The once-only principle is so well understood by active citizens and by businesses that it is demanded from their respective public administrations. The general public is aware of the significant reduction of administrative burden and trusts implementations of once-only delivery of data across Europe and on national level, based on their ability to verify and track the compliant use of their data at any time. The public administration values the benefits delivered by realising the once-only principle, such as improved quality of data and efficiency gains, and thus considers it as the default option for any new administrative process or reform of existing processes. Based on the full political commitment, any deviation from the once-only principle needs to be explicitly justified. The legislative, organisational, and technological framework for implementing data provision only once also creates new opportunities for innovative private sector services aimed at citizens."

This vision was developed in an iterative process through the work of the project partners as well as input from the SCOOP4C steering board and stakeholder community. In order to realise this vision for citizens, a number of key enablers have to be (put) in place. If these enablers are missing, the once-only principle may be exposed to severe barriers for its implementation. Hence, countries need to overcome these barriers by putting in place the respective enablers to ensure the successful and effective implementation of the once-only principle. 

Along the levels of interoperability of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), SCOOP4C has identified the following issues:

  • political commitment,
  • legal interoperability,
  • organisational commitment and collaborative business processes,
  • semantic interoperability (such as standards, taxonomies, common terminologies etc.),
  • technical interoperability/ technical enablers (such as secure networks and infrastructures),
  • and interoperability governance/ governance mechanisms.

Beyond the enablers along the interoperability levels of the EIF, the following crucial soft 'enabling factors' were established: 

  • motivators, benefits, and public value, 
  • data protection and privacy, 
  • trust and transparency, 
  • socio-cultural influence factors,
  • citizen-centred design, 
  • data quality, 
  • flexible business models.

The vision as well as the barriers and enablers complement the analysis of once-only cases elaborated in deliverable 1.2 and further guide the subsequent work in SCOOP4C. The deliverable can be accessed under the section project materials, where you can also finde more deliverables and all presentations of our workshops.