Opportunity for dialogue between almost all Member States
The KEHA Centre’s Digital Single Market team and the European Commission wanted to bring together the Member States’ SDG coordination and OOTS development teams along with the competent authorities of procedures and registers to discuss the challenges, benefits and opportunities of the OOTS data exchange. At the event, representatives of the Member States were able to discuss matters more formally in the framework set by the programme and informally during breaks and over lunch.
An estimated 120 participants from more than 20 Member States participated in the event, including the national SDGr coordination teams and Competent Authorities. Approximately half of the participants were Competent Authorities in the domains of population, education, vehicle, social security and business register data and procedures. Approximately one quarter of the participants were from Finland and the rest from other Member States.
You can find more information about the event programme on the Commission website.
Event opened with speeches
In her opening remarks, Amaryllis Verhoeven, Director of DG Grow, pointed out that one of the main objectives of the new Commission is to reduce the administrative burden on the Single Market and explained how the SDG Regulation and the OOTS will speed up the functioning of citizens and businesses within the Single Market. Dan Koivulaakso, Head of Department for Growth and Climate, Nordic Council of Ministers, highlighted the close digital cooperation between the Baltic States and Nordic countries, whose aim is to form the most sustainable and integrated region in Europe by 2030.
After the opening speeches, Senior Ministerial Adviser Liisa Huhtala of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment stressed in her speech that the EU should continue to develop the Single Market. Highly functional cross border digital services and the exchange of OOTS data play a key role in this objective. In the last speech of the day, Alex Lubow of the Commission’s DG GROW, stressed that the EU will continue to work toward simplifying cross-border procedures, and that SDG and OOTS are crucial tools for developing a more integrated EU.
Participants divided into workshops
In the second half of the first seminar day, participants were divided into smaller workshop groups. The Competent Authorities for procedures and register data were divided into five thematic groups: population data, studies, vehicles, business and social security. Parallel workshops were held for SDGr coordination teams and OOTS development teams.
In the population data workshop, the authorities pointed out that the current eIDas attributes are not sufficient for authenticating identities in e-services. Instead, a permanent unique identifier is needed for the eIDas model. The workshop also discussed the providing of incomplete evidence and a more specifically structured definition of OOTS evidence. The Studies workshop highlighted the varying starting points of Member States for sharing study data in the OOTS, which may make it difficult to find a single data exchange model suitable for all Member States.
The Vehicle workshop focused on the procedures for importing vehicles from different Member States and considered whether the OOTS could be used in connection with importing vehicles. According to the authorities, more extensive regulatory changes to vehicle inspection and registration procedures than are found in the SDG Regulation would be needed in the EU in order to make use of the OOTS in the exchange of register data. Likewise, the Social security workshop focused on whether data on social security procedures will only be exchanged in the EESSI system or whether the OOTS could also be used to transmit data. Although the evidence to be transmitted was not identified in the workshop, the Member States and European Commission will continue to investigate the data to be exchanged in the OOTS.
The first of the workshops held for the SDGr coordination and OOTS development teams focused on the support provided by the Commission in the implementation of the OOTS. The second focused on developing testing of the OOTS coordinated by the Commission. In the third workshop, SDGr coordinators discussed, among other things, the working methods for implementation of the SDG Regulation and the standardisation of data models for evidence.
Baltic and Nordic countries reported on implementation of the OOTS and shared good practices
The second day of the event began with a panel discussion consisting of SDGr coordinators from the Baltic countries and Nordic countries and OOTS developers. In a panel led by the Commission, panellists representing Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Finland and Estonia reported on progress in implementation of the OOTS in their respective countries and their observations on the benefits of the system to both users and authorities.
The day continued with more detailed presentations of good practices. In Finland, good practices in OOTS implementation were presented by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) and the Digital and Population Data Services Agency (DVV). Casper von Nandelstadh of Kela explained how the procedure for applying for study benefits was integrated into the OOTS. Torbjörn Sandell of DVV talked about integration of Population Information System data with the OOTS.
The Baltic countries also shared their good practices. In her own presentation, Margit Aus from the Estonian Ministry of the Interior explained her observations on the sharing of Estonian population data using the OOTS. Aus pointed out that Estonia does not collect all the data required for many pieces of OOTS population evidence. Žydrūnas Nevardauskas and Eglė Šimukėnaite of Lithuania’s State Digital Solutions Agency and Ainis Pumputis of the OOTS development team reported on implementation of the country’s OOTS as part of a wider national digitalisation programme. Finally, Peteris Trokša of Latvia’s State Digital Development Agency presented Latvia’s DAGR system, which collects and transmits data from official Latvian registers to enable the rapid and efficient national and cross-border exchange of data in the OOTS.
More events to be organised by other Member States?
The feedback on the event has been very good. The objective of bringing the Competent Authorities of different Member States together to share challenges, solutions and opportunities was achieved. In addition, the SDGr coordination and OOTS development teams had an excellent opportunity to discuss issues related to OOTS implementation in more depth.
Both the European Commission and other Member States are interested in continuing the event concept in another Member State. The best practices of the event will be documented to support similar events in other Member States.
The KEHA Centre’s Digital Single Market team thanks all participants and presenters and, in particular, the European Commission for its cooperation in organising the event. Hopefully the event could be the start of a more common practice.
