The Once-Only Principle

Front matter

Robert Krimmer Andriana Prentza Szymon Mamrot (Eds.)

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Preface

The Once-Only Principle (OOP) is part of the seven underlying principles of the eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020. Its importance is highlighted by the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment, signed on October 6, 2017, and the Berlin Declaration on Digital Society and Value-Based Digital Government, signed on December 8, 2020. OOP aims to make the government more effective and more superficial and to reduce administrative burdens by asking citizens and companies to provide certain (standard) information to the public authorities only once.

Thus, the goal of this TOOP book is to describe and document the developments and results of the Once-Only Principle Project (TOOP). TOOP was not a typical example of the type of large-scale pilot usually funded by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. It was a horizontal project that was policy-driven, with the aim of showing that the implementation of OOP in a cross-border and cross-sector setting is feasible. More than 50 partners from more than 20 Member States and associated countries of the EU participated in the TOOP project. Several things happened during the project, such as the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the most essential *game-changing" event was the establishment of the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR). With the TOOP book, we wanted to summarize the results of the TOOP project from different points of view, from policy, organizational, architectural, and, last but not least, technical perspectives.

We would like to express our gratitude to the European Commission, DGs CONNECT, GROW, and DIGIT, as well as REA, for the support and good collaboration. Moreover, we want to thank the external reviewers of the project for their valuable input. Special thanks go to the national governments of the beneficiaries and the other organizations that have participated in the project for their active contribution. Moreover, the project would not have been possible without the enduring, productive, cheerful crowd working on the TOOP. Thank you all for making our project a reality!

Finally, we are also thankful for the financial support received through the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 737460.

June 2021 Robert Krimmer Andriana Prentza Szymon Mamrot

Introduction The Once-Only Principle (TOOP)

Over the past two decades, digital tools and the internet have been at the heart of the transformation of our industries but more widely of our society. Behavior of citizens and consumers has significantly changed. Things that have long been thought too complex to implement are possible today. Information is at the end of our fingertips. Expectations from citizens have, however, also changed. When Amazon brought the concept of ‘one click’ to order goods on the internet, people wanted to see the same ease of service delivery from any service provider, including from the public sector.

The public sector, the heavily paper-based administration, has been shaken. The pressure on administrations to evolve has grown to the brink of risking them becoming obsolete. Many in the younger generation in particular see them as just a burden, slow and inefficient.

In Europe, public sector organizations and procedures are not the responsibility of the European Union. Still, the European Commission and the Member States have been working together to jointly prepare the public sector for its digital transformation since as early as 2001, which was was indeed the year when setting up cross-border digital public services, allowing citizens and businesses from a Member State to interact with a public service in another Member State electronically, was first declared a priority for Europe (European Commission 2003).

As a first step, through work in the eGovernment group, Member States and the Commission identified a few key domains where common solutions had to be developed at a European level. In 2005, three topics were identified: eID, eProcurement, and eHealth. With the financial support of the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP)', the Commission launched the STORK, PEPPOL, and EPSOS projects. Quickly, the idea of launching projects together gained momentum with the eventual launch of the eSENS project. This family of projects? led to a paradigm shift. To deliver user-friendly, burden-free digital public services, a change of practice was needed between the different corners of the administration. Administrations needed to reuse, as far as possible, common services, common building blocks.

Thus, the holy grail in public service delivery is the application of the ‘Once-Only Principle', eliminating the need for citizens and businesses to provide over and over

! https://ec.europa.eu/cip/ict-psp/index en.htm. ? STORK, PEPPOL, EPSOS, SPOCS, eCODEX, eSENS.

viii Introduction The Once-Only Principle (TOOP)

again the same information for receiving a public service. Some Member States have demonstrated the operational feasibility of the principle. Still, for many it was considered too complex, either for legal reasons or for legacy system problems. So, applying the principle at European level was considered non-achievable for the coming decades. Implementing the Once-Only Principle will bring time-savings, lower administrative burdens, reduce costs, and accelerate the fulfillment of legal obligations through reduced information requirements, less frequent reporting from businesses, and, eventually, even pre-filled forms. Administrations will benefit through improved service quality and administrative efficiency. The shared data between public administrations remain under the control and the consent of the businesses or citizens involved; personal data is now in the hands of the citizen, who is in control of whom to share that data with.

Nonetheless, with the help of these preparatory activities and the political commitment of the Commission and in particular of Vice President Andrus Ansip, the Commission adopted in 2015 in the “eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020?" the Once-Only Principle, and in regulation (EU) 2018/1724* established a single digital gateway in respect of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with the objective of seeing it implemented within a few years. This achievement was possible thanks to the commitment of Member States, of key, highly passionate people. The outcome will European demonstrate how the Union can reduce borders and the burden for businesses and citizens.

? https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/european-egovernment-action-plan-2016-2020.

^ https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2018.295.01.0001.01. ENG&toc=OJ:L:2018:295:TOC.

Contents

The Once-Only Principle: A Matter of Trust...

Robert Krimmer, Andriana Prentza, Szymon Mamrot, and Carsten Schmidt

Implementation of the *Once-Only' Principle in Europe — National Approdel c.ca ua ee es bee EERO HK NEW Xe S o EORR Szymon Mamrot and Katarzyna Rzyszczak