The deliverable 2.2, under the lead of CERTH, aimed at developing a strategic stakeholder engagement plan for the implementation of the once-only principle. This gives governments, civil society organisations and policy makers who will take the lead at OOP implementations guidelines in order to successfully engage stakeholders.

The methodology followed is based first on theoretical findings from literature and on empirical findings through feedback gathered from the stakeholder community, and second on synthesis of a strategic engagement plan for OOP stakeholders by discussing the key elements and providing guidance on how best to plan stakeholder engagement. The reviewed literature includes works from three parallel directions: stakeholder engagement; co-creation; and public participation; and it was additionally enhanced through the examination of actual stakeholder engagement plans that have been specifically developed for public sector projects. The findings of the literature review discuss the key aspects and challenges for conducting successful stakeholder engagement. This deliverable reports also the validation of the aforementioned findings by the stakeholder community. Feedback from discussions in three stakeholder workshops and two Steering Board meetings was mostly targeted on the importance of political commitment and political continuance, of considering cultural differences, of starting small and showing early results, of identifying and recruiting believers, and of involving multiple and diverse stakeholders.

The major result reported in this deliverable is the strategic stakeholder engagement plan. The biggest challenge for proposing a strategic stakeholder engagement plan for OOP implementation is the wide scope of this task. There is a wide target audience, e.g. governments, policy makers and other relevant actors such as CSOs, NGOs, etc. across EU, and a wide variety of OOP implementations to plan for, e.g. implementations with different scopes, purposes, circumstances, etc. This means that there is no single ‘right’ way to effectively perform stakeholder engagement; however, there are a number of key elements that act as enablers to successful engagement. Therefore, the result of this deliverable has been focused on discussing these key elements and providing guidance on how best to plan stakeholder engagement.

In specific, the stakeholder engagement plan is organised around six key questions:

Why to engage? • What to engage on? • Who to engage? • When to engage each stakeholder? • Where to engage? • How to engage?

The deliverable is still under review by the European Commission - therefore you will have to be registered to our community forum to gain access. Please leave us feedback!