Many businesses regard the amount of time and money they devote to compliance with the rules as an obstacle to their activity. Hard-to-understand rules and repeatedly providing the same information to different government bodies cause irritation. Both entrepreneurs and public authorities believe procedures can be improved. They are therefore working together to introduce the Company Dossier (Ondernemingsdossier) to reduce the regulatory burden.
What is the Company Dossier?
The Company Dossier is a new way of collaborating and sharing information between businesses and governments with the aim of reducing the regulatory burden. The Company Dossier enables a business to record certain information about its operations just once and provide that same information to government bodies such as regulators and licensing authorities as often as required. The company itself determines which authorities have access to the Company Dossier. Proper arrangements should therefore be made in advance about how the company and government bodies can exchange the right information. These arrangements are established for each sector in a collaboration agreement, so there is ultimately one source of information businesses can provide to government bodies: the Company Dossier.
The result: more time to do business, improved compliance with the rules and simplification of supervision.
How does the Company Dossier work?
Trade associations and government bodies agree on how they wish to exchange information and lay this down in collaboration agreements. These agreements form the basis for working with the Company Dossier. For example, agreements are made about the powers the authorised regulator has to inspect the company information, which documents are included in the Company Dossier and how often an onsite inspection is required. The entrepreneur subsequently records the relevant company information in the Company Dossier just once and updates it as required. As a result, the entrepreneur can retrieve relevant and transparent information about rules and regulations, and record this in his or her Company Dossier. If a licence has to be applied for or if action has to be taken, this is reported in the Company Dossier. The company starts by planning and monitoring its actions and by recording the results in the Dossier. The company then authorises various government bodies, such as regulators, to inspect this information. This way, the regulators always have access to up-to-date compliance information so more onsite inspections have a better focus and can be carried out more efficiently. Because entrepreneurs are faced with many different fields of legislation, permits and regulators, individual guidance on rules can also be provided through Company Dossiers. Guidance on rules clearly indicates what an entrepreneur must do to comply with the rules.
The Company Dossier makes the digital exchange of information between the company and government bodies easier, more transparent and more cost-efficient.
Benefits for businesses:
- Own company information and processes are the starting point.
- Clear insight into relevant rules and measures to be taken.
- Re-use of previously entered data.
- More efficient and more focused onsite supervision.
- Required information is gathered from one traceable location. It is accessible online, so can be used everywhere.
- Online licence application.
Benefits for government bodies:
- Fewer requests for assistance from entrepreneurs, less information required.
- Fewer incomplete licence applications.
- More possibilities for the automated processing of forms.
- More efficient supervision as a result of better prepared onsite inspections.
- Targeted supervision, more space for advice and prevention.
- Improved regulatory compliance by companies.
- More up-to-date information about a company, which can be consulted at any time by all authorised public bodies (less exchange of data).
Policy Context
The development of the Company Dossier is a partnership initiative involving:
- VNO-NCW (Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers),
- MKB Nederland (Dutch Federation of Small and Medium-sized enterprises),
- Trade associations for the hospitality industry, rubber and plastics and the entertainment sector,
- VNG (Association of Netherlands Municipalities),
- Inspectieraad (the General Inspectorate of the Netherlands) and
- The Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Authoritative management of the Company Dossiers’ implementation procedure is required to make this project a success. To this end, the Beraad Ondernemingsdossier (Company Dossier Board) was established with the task of creating a sufficient administrative support base and implementing the Company Dossier on a large scale.
Implementing the Company Dossier carries the risk of system failure. Even though all parties involved are aware of the advantages of the Company Dossier, no action may be taken or actions may be taken at too slow a pace. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is responsible for temporarily managing operations to prevent this system failure from actually happening. This means the Ministry of Economic Affairs supports the Company Dossier both at a political and at a managerial level. This includes the Company Dossier being part of the Regulatory Burden on Businesses Programme, the Digitale Agenda.nl (Digital Agenda) and the top sector policy (ICT Roadmap). Parliament is regularly informed about the progress of the Company Dossier through the Regulatory Burdens on Businesses Progress Report. Once the critical mass has been reached and the implementation of the Company Dossier is an irreversible process, this administrative management role will no longer be required, after careful safeguarding. At a structural level, the Ministry of Economic Affairs will only be responsible for the management policy of the standardisation agreements for the Company Dossier.
Description of target users and groups
The Company Dossier is a collaboration project between business and trade organisations, local governments and the ministry of Economic Affairs. Both businesses and government bodies have shown great interest in the Company Dossier. Three trade associations and the relevant public authorities began the implementation of the Company Dossier in 2011. Businesses and government bodies in the rubber and plastics, the hotel and catering and the recreation industries regard the partially completed digital collaboration as a logical and user-friendly new development.
For the Company Dossier to be a success, it is essential for it to tie in closely with the everyday practices of business and government. An incremental approach offers the opportunity to gain sufficient experience during the initial implementation of the Company Dossier and to incorporate the savings and quality improvements that have actually been realised in a wider rollout to other sectors.
Description of the way to implement the initiative
Over the coming years, the Company Dossier will be broadly implemented in the hospitality, entertainment and the rubber and plastics sectors. But reaching the critical mass of 80,000 businesses involved also requires a broadening of its use to other sectors; these can be branches but also for example a group of businesses under a legislative domain. The implementation procedure will be carried out incrementally with a minimum of two to three sectors per year. Within the scope of broadening this procedure, a large number of branches were interviewed. Around thirty branches have shown interest in the implementation of the Company Dossier. Based on follow-up discussions, twelve branches are considering joining the Company Dossier over the coming period, each at their own pace. To this effect, they will take a series of follow-up steps (such as preparing a business case) for the definitive decision-making. In addition, it will of course be possible that other branches/sectors show an interest in implementing the Company Dossier.
For businesses and governments, the mutual benefits will be fully realised if over time all relevant authorities join the Company Dossier. This primarily relates to municipalities and also provinces and other public authorities and the National Government (departments, State Inspectorates). Registration will occur gradually. Government organisations have indicated they would respond positively to businesses willing to exchange information through the company dossier. This refers to businesses within sectors that have agreed with the Board and with the Ministry of Economic Affairs that they are going to implement the Company Dossier.
Agreements between businesses and government organisations about implementation of the Company Dossier are set out in cooperation agreements, which are currently being made between branches and municipalities. For the purposes of efficiency there is greater focus on general cooperation agreements, where required, in addition with specific agreements (per sector or per government organisation).
Technology solution
The information exchange standards for the Dossier have been developed with private companies and government stakeholders and are not proprietary. They are based on existing (open) standards and are of an open nature themselves. They are published at NEN under number NTA9040 (www.nen.nl/normshop).
Technology choice: Standards-based technology, Mainly (or only) open standardsMain results, benefits and impacts
The objectives are partially qualitative (fewer incomplete permit applications, better compliance, less and more focused supervision and remote supervision, improvement of own business operations) and partly quantitative (regulatory burden reduced by 15%, less regulatory burden for businesses involved, reduction of the implementation costs for authorities involved). Both businesses involved and government organisations indicate that qualitative benefits that may be gained are at least as effective as the quantitative savings, and may even be more effective.
Regarding the benefits for companies, the efficiencies are currently difficult to calculate because of variations in size and requirements for compliance. However, initial calculations show that the benefits range between € 120 and € 4,000 per company per year. The first three trade associations that are working with the Dossier estimate they will benefit by € 13 million per year. They also estimate that these benefits will increase over time.
Any information on the benefits at an aggregate level, such as GDP or € million saving, is currently not available. Regarding to the local government, it is expected that the potential beneficial effects are foreseen in efficiency and in better service for businesses. The business cases for eight local governments has been determined, although these can differ in size and number of companies in the municipality. The first indication is that the structural benefits are of around € 15,000 – 60,000 per year.
It is also believed that when the Dossier is fully implemented in the public sector, the effect will be more substantial, particularly because hidden costs can be avoided once public organisations work more efficiently in the domain of control and inspection of companies.
Return on investment
Return on investment: Larger than €10,000,000Lessons learnt
- Ensure there is a business case for e-service provision to determine where profits can be generated for the project.
- Continue to see things from the customer’s perspective, and keep in mind that the end user often has different objectives than the provider of digital services.