Nordic Baltic OOTS 2.0 Project
OOTS 2.0 Project is a Nordic Baltic co-operation project funded by The Nordic Council of Minister’s Cross Border Digital Services (CBDS) Programme under The Nordic Council of Ministers for Digitalisation (MR-DIGITAL). It is conducted as a co-operation between the national SDG coordination teams of the Nordic and Baltic countries and is led by the Finnish team.
Single Digital Regulation and Once Only Technical System
SDG Regulation came into force in 2018 and one of its main requirements for the member states and European Commission is setting up Once only technical system (OOTS).
By using the OOTS the citizens and businesses can in cross-border processes deliver evidence from one member state’s authorities to the authorities of another member state: The evidence is sent from authority in country A to authority in country B through OOTS based on the request of the user.
Evidence refers to information from authorities that may be required as an attachment to or in connection with a procedure. Evidence includes a Trade Register extract or a certificate confirming that you have been admitted to a study place.
Project’s Background
Nordic Baltic Region is among the most digitally developed areas in the world – many services are already available digitally for our citizens and businesses.
OOTS 2.0 project was conceived in the project group of the previous project based on the observations and thoughts that were made about the OOTS system under construction.
Read about our previous SDG OOP Poc Pilots -project here.
The OOTS 2.0 project focuses on studying future possibilities of OOTS and enhancing the current OOTS architecture to facilitate seamless background transfer of structured data between Nordic and Baltic countries. This involves identifying and addressing technical, data protection, and legal challenges that may hinder such exchanges. Through proof of concepts (PoC), the project aims to test the practical implementation of background data exchange using the OOTS architecture, ensuring users can also track data usage.
Some of the OOTS Challenges the New Project is looking into
- Complexity of OOTS-architecture as it is now
- Several steps and log ins in the OOTS process
- Evidence preview is now handled in separate preview spaces when it could be handled in procedure portal with checking the prefilled form
- The current way of using evidence data at the end of the procedure differs from the way most if not all Nordic and Baltic countries already exchange data nationally in the background
- For competent authorities OOTS procedure might currently differ between cross-border users and national users
- The current way of using evidence/evidence data doesn’t necessarily encourage the use of structured data
- Possibilities of using structured data for other purposes than checking the eligibility are limited or non-existent
Goals of the OOTS 2.0 Project
One of the central goals of the project is to investigate how the OOTS architecture could effectively transfer structured data between Nordic and Baltic countries in the background in the procedures. The project aims to find new possibilities to exploit the future OOTS.
The idea is to
- Identify technical, data protection and legal challenges that would be barriers for the exchange of structured data in the background
- Test in practice using PoCs how the exchange of information in the background between the Nordic and Baltic countries could work using OOTS architecture possibly including user possibility to track data usage
- Communicate the results at Nordic, Baltic and European levels
- Encourage EU Member states to exchange structured data in the OOTS by showcasing its benefits
Planned Outcomes of the OOTS 2.0 Project
- Assessment of necessary amendments to the SDG Regulation and/or the OOTS Implementing Regulation
- Data protection report describing issues that need to be considered and suggestions how they could be resolved
- A process description of the process, in which the structured data of the evidence material is made available to the procedure portal so that it can be used to pre-fill the information in the application form, where the user can preview data
- Simplified high level architecture description that enables the use of OOTS architecture as a backend system for cross-border data exchange
- PoC implementation of the suggested high-level architecture
Project timeline from 2024 until 2026
OOTS 2.0 Project started in spring 2024.
Phase one will last until the first half of 2025 and concentrate on studies on Legal and Technical Aspects. After that the project group consisting of national SDG and OOTS coordinators and experts will choose the proof of concept implementations that are carried out within the framework of the project.
In phase two, PoCs are made and observations are collected from them in the project report.
The project is planned to end at the end of 2026.
For more information
Project manager Kirsi Mikkonen
Development and Administrative Services Centre (KEHA Centre)