Access to Base Registries - Helping public administrations with information reuse

Peter Burian, Project Officer for ISA² Access to Base Registries, DG DIGIT, European Commission

Instead of asking citizens for information that they have already provided, the Access to Base Registries Action tries to help public administrations across Europe to implement solutions that focus on the reuse of this information through base registries.

As the authentic sources of data for public administrations, base registries are one of the basic building blocks of public services. They are the key to making something like the ‘once-only principle’ a reality across Europe.

But what does that mean? In order to provide quick and user-friendly public services to citizens and businesses, public administrations are trying to adopt customer-centric approaches and readjust their ways of working.

One of the ways to achieve efficiency and increase user-friendliness is through this once-only principle. Instead of asking citizens for information that they have already provided, we try to help public administrations to implement solutions for the reuse the information they already have. Much of this information is stored in authoritative databases, the base registries, a trusted and authoritative source of information.

Why do we need Access to Base Registries?

The information needed for operating European public services is owned and managed at the EU Member State level (or within an EU country). Our role in this process is to look at whether and how the opening up of the registries – with the appropriate security and privacy measures – can help foster the establishment of European public services.

For such cooperation to take place, the interfaces between the registers need to be defined, published and harmonised at legal, organisational, semantic and technical levels, according to the European Interoperability Framework.

Through the ISA² action Access to Base Registries, our unit sets out to assess the needs for a Framework for Base Registry Access. It is based on best practices and all the different activities associated with master data management.

What are the objectives of Access to Base Registries?

Our mission statement is providing both national and cross-border access to the base registries of data held by EU countries, by defining a common framework that makes this possible.

What are we working on right now?

At the moment, there are two points on which we are focusing. The first one is the Framework for Base Registry Access and Interconnection. It describes the agreements and infrastructure for operating base registries and the relationships with other entities in order to provide EU countries with a European benchmark.

The second point of attention is a specification for a semantic data model to describe the data in a base registry in order to facilitate the creation of registries of registries. The development of this European Registry of Base Registries requires a defined data model to support the description of Base Registries and Registries of Base Registries. This will allow data discovery and exchange of data, reducing redundancy by supporting the once-only principle, initially in the individual EU countries, and subsequently at the European level.

Want to learn more about our work, and the Access to Base Registries action? Have a look at our Joinup page!