On 12 April 2024, experts working on the Once-Only Technical System from the Directorates-General for Digital Services (DIGIT) and Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW) promoted various aspects of Once-Only during the Interoperable Europe Academy 2024.
The Interoperable Europe Academy (IOPEU Academy) is an educational initiative boosting advanced digital skills in the interoperability field in public administrations. To do so, it offers all online, self-paced online courses. You can already enrol on an eLearning on the Once Only Technical System right now.
The Interoperable Europe Academy 2024 in Leuven, Belgium, discussed the newly in force Interoperable Europe Act and the changes it will bring. Lectures, workshops and panels provided participants with practical and theoretical insights on interoperability enablers.
The Once-Only Technical System saves EU citizens and businesses time and money by allowing the automatic exchange of official documents and data (such as diplomas, certifications or permits) between the competent authorities that issue this data and the public body requesting the data. This automatic data exchange puts users in charge of their data and reduces the costs involved when completing cross-border administration within the European Single Market.
Two dedicated workshops looked at specific aspects of the Once-Only Technical System.
The European Commission’s Joao Rodrigues Frade, Caroline Corneau and Herbert Leitold, Director-General of the Secure Information Technology Center Austria addressed “What EUDI Wallet and Once Only Technical System have in common?”, in reference to the EU Digital Identity Wallet initiative. The EU Digital Identity Wallet will enable citizens and businesses to store identity data, credentials associated to their identity and other data issued by trusted sources in a secure wallet application. It will allow citizens and businesses to provide their data to relying parties on request or to use it for online and offline authentication and for the provision of data to digital services.
The EUDI Wallet complements the Once-Only Technical System as a wa to facilitate the interactions of citizens and businesses with EU public administrations, making it easier to move around and do business in the Single Market.
In March 2024, a dedicated OOTS-EUDI Wallet Contact Group, consisting of national experts from EU Member States published an interim report, listing five specific areas in which these two central EU digital policy initiatives reinforce and benefit from each other. Participants in the workshop discussed these synergies and noted the value of two systems directly improving users’ access to their secure data, as well as optimising investments by reusing existing and common technical components.
In addition, the European Commission’s Athanasios Karalopoulos, Valentini Paparrizou, Nils McGrath looked at the specific administrative procedures in which the Once-Only Technical System allows for data exchange in the “Exploring procedural requirements and evidences with the Once Only Technical System Evidence Explorer” workshop. EU Member States are currently defining which procedures require the exchange of evidence across intra-EU borders and which evidences they require to complete them. The Evidence Explorer currently provides the most benefit to national Competent Authorities who either request or provide the evidence needed for people to complete administrative procedures. The Evidence Explorer allows them to see the procedural requirements that other Member States have defined, to assess whether there are procedural requirements that match the evidence they issue, and to understand whether the format in which they issue or provide evidence matches the formats of other Member States.
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