Towards the Implementation of the EU-Wide “Once-Only Principle”: Perceptions of Citizens in the DACH-Region

Abstract

This paper presents selected findings from a recent empirical research conducted in the context of modernization of public administrations. E-government adoption has reached a stagnation point over the last few years in the DACH region. The European Commission has been working intensively on projects aiming to overcome the existing digital barriers between EU Member States. Citizens repeatedly provide the same personal information to different public authorities, which causes frustration and inefficiency. The Once-Only Principle suggests that citizens should have the right of providing information to public authorities only once and that the provided data will be exchanged between national authorities of the EU Member States. By signing the Tallinn Declaration in October 2017, EU Member States have already committed to implement this principle. Sharing personal data of individuals between public authorities within national boundaries as well as with the public administrations of other EU Member States would assuredly ease-up data provision and increase efficiency. Yet, higher convenience comes at a cost of data protection and privacy, which becomes highly critical when sensitive personal data is involved. From this standpoint, a particular emphasis needs to be placed on understanding expectations, sensitivities and privacy related concerns of citizens, which is argued to be one of the key drivers behind the adoption of G2C e-government initiatives.

Developing Cross-border E-Governance: Exploring Interoperability and Cross-border Integration

“…In addition, one of the major challenges in the implementation of the OOP at the crossborder level is the mutual trust between the public administration on the cross-border level [24]. Similarly, citizens in the DACH region are also concerned about the seamless data exchange across borders, where two-thirds of respondents are having a negative impression of the cross-border OOP implementation [25].…”

“…The SDG regulation aims to create one single gateway in which the citizens and business would be able to get information, give feedback and to access online public procedures. The Single Digital Gateway will be implemented into the EU portal Your Europe which will act as a single access point to existing national portals [25]. The SDG regulation requires all Member States to enable access to 21 digital public procedures 1 also for the cross-border users.…”

Measuring the Impact of the Once Only Principle for Businesses Across Borders

“…In such frameworks [31] however, the approach for gathering and evaluation of indicators for impact can vary widely, from highly structural quantitative methods to highly qualitative ones. Moreover, where the end-user is taken up in many indicators in these frameworks, their presence in evaluation methods is often lacking [1]. Looking at the variety of scoring mechanisms used, it becomes clear that there is no one preferred methodology when it comes to IA's in relation to analysing digitisation in and of public services.…”

“…Secondly, the IA framework contributes to the development of recommendations for the long-term sustainability of project results and its connection to other e-Government initiatives and regulations such as the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR) [12]. 1 To this end, this chapter is structured as follows. In the next section, we explore benefits and challenges of the OOP, followed by a section on the how we went about developing an IA framework based on related impact indicators.…”

Drivers for and Barriers to the Cross-border Implementation of the Once-Only Principle

“…However, if certain groups also benefit from the inefficiency or complexity of a service, the organizations and political actors might encounter some resistance for the implementation of OOP. Moreover, as Akkaya and Krcmar (2018) highlight, some concerns regarding privacy and data-protection may also ease the demand, or support, for the OOP.…”