The Directorate-General Simplification and Digitalisation, which is part of BOSA, supports the government and federal organisations in their digitisation drive. It is the driving force behind the evolution and the digital reforms of the federal government. This directorate-general provides advice and develops projects in connection with the new technologies, paying particular attention to citizens and businesses. It is also the main body responsible for coordinating interoperability initiatives.  

The Directorate-General Simplification and Digitalisation also includes a committee whose responsibility is to coordinate base registries interconnection. It is an entity that, by law, is charged with the organisation of eGovernment in Belgium, data electronic exchange, as well as the integrated unlocking of data. It has become the most significant actor regarding public sector services, especially after the passing of a law in 2014 that makes it mandatory for public entities to store their authoritative source data. In this context, BOSA facilitates the dialogue between base registries’ owners, the operational units involved in processing base registries data and the consumers of base registries data. It performs four main tasks: 

1. Uniting all national service integrators (three federal and one for every region); 

2. Coordinating the working methods of service integrators; 

3. Monitoring all authoritative data disclosed by service integrators (not bilateral data exchanged between governments/departments); and 

4. Establishing the circle of trust between service integrators. 

Mathieu Michel Secretary of State for Digitalisation, responsible for Administrative Simplification, Privacy and the Belgian Buildings Agency   Source: https://news.belgium.be/fr/mathieu-michel-secretaire-detat-la-digitalis…;

Nico Waeyaert Chairman Federal Public Service Policy & Support   Source:  https://bosa.belgium.be

Jack Hamande Director-General DG Digital Transformation   Source:  https://bosa.belgium.be

The Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS) supports the implementation of eGovernment services in the social sector. In particular, it promotes integrated services across all public institutions dealing with social security. The CBSS also manages Registry bis, which contains a database of persons who do not have the Belgian nationality, yet who live in Belgium and are registered with the Belgian social security. 

Frank Robben General Manager of the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS) and CEO of Smals   Source: http://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/

The federal Departments, Ministries and Agencies are responsible for the implementation of individual or joint eGovernment projects falling within their respective areas of competence. 

The government agency Belnet, part of the Federal Science Policy Office, provides secure internet access with very high bandwidth to end users in education institutions, research centres and public administrations. In addition, Belnet is in charge of operating the federal network FedMAN. 

Smals is a not-for-profit organisation realising IT projects in the domains of eGovernment and eHealth. Smals is the main IT provider of the Belgian federal government and acts as a contracting authority. 

Frank Robben General Manager of the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS) and CEO of Smals   Source: http://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/

The Federal Public Service of the Interior is tasked with coordinating the National Registry of Natural Persons, which handles the master personal data of natural and legal persons. The National Registry contains data from several registries: the Population Registry, the Foreigner Registry and a Waiting Registry. The municipalities (and the Immigration Office for the last category of the population) are the ones responsible for recording the information. Everyone whose data is maintained in the National Registry has a unique identification code, i.e. the national registry number. The Once-Only principle is applied to the registry. The consultation of data in the National Registry is subject to authorisation from the relevant sectoral committee established within the Commission for the Protection of Privacy (now Data Protection Authority), which is competent to grant access to the National Registry information or communication thereof. The National Registry is managed by the Directorate for Institutions and Population, which manages the central database in which all the information related to the population is recorded.  

The Federal Public Service Mobility and Transport is responsible for the coordination of the Vehicle Registry, which handles master data for vehicles. In cooperation with the Directorate for Vehicles Registration, the department is also responsible for the management of the Crossroads Bank of the Vehicles Registry, which handles master data of vehicles. The Vehicle Registry functions under the authority of the (federal) central government, the Directorate for Vehicles Registration and the FPS Mobility and Transport. The service has been fully integrated through the WebDIV application, an IT application developed by the FPS Mobility and Transport enabling insurance companies, agents, brokers and leasing companies to register their clients’ cars online.  

The Federal Public Service Economy is responsible for the coordination of the Registry of the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises, which handles master data for businesses. The Crossroads Bank for Enterprises is an authentic source of information that stores all basic data regarding enterprises and their individual business locations. It incorporates data from the former National Registry of Legal Entities, the former Trade Registry, the VAT Registry and the social security administration. All the existing data from the above-mentioned sources have been combined by the FPS Economy in the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises, which provides a truly centralised ‘crossroad’ of data on companies. It is kept up to date by the authorised organisations that input the data. The FPS Economy is also designated as supervisory body for (qualified) trust services as mentioned in Article 17 of the eIDAS Regulation. 

The (Federal) Social Security is responsible for the coordination of the CBSS. The CBSS Registry is complementary and subsidiary to the National Registry. Over the past 17 years, a major business process re-engineering and computerisation effort has been undertaken by about 3 000 Belgian public and private actors in the social sector from different levels (national, regional and local), under the coordination of the CBSS.  

The National Property Documentation Centre is responsible for the coordination of the Land Registry, which handles master data for land and parcels.  

At federal level, the ICT- and eGovernment-related projects are examined by the Committee for General and Home Affairs, and the Civil Service of the House of Representatives, as well as by the Committee for Home and Administrative Affairs of the Senate. 

Since 25 May 2018, the Data Protection Authority (DPA) has replaced the Commission for the Protection of Privacy (Privacy Commission). With the Act of 3 December 2017, the DPA became the new Belgian independent supervisory authority in charge of ensuring compliance with the fundamental principles of personal data protection. 

Political responsibility for eGovernment in the Belgian regions is held directly by the ‘Minister-Presidents’ (Prime Ministers) of the three regions: the Flemish Region, the Walloon Region and the Brussels-Capital Region. Within their own areas of competence, the Wallonia-Brussels French-speaking Community (WBF), in charge of education and culture policies for the French-speaking Community in Belgium, and the German-speaking Community are also working on enabling some of their services. The institutions of the Flemish-speaking Community were merged with those of the Flemish Region in 1980. 

Jan Jambon Minister-President of the Government of Flanders, Flemish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Culture, Digitalisation and Facility Management   Source: https://www.janjambon.be/

Willy Borsus Vice-President, Minister of the Economy, Foreign Trade, Research & Innovation, Digitalisation, Regional Planning, the Walloon Formation Agency and Competency Centres     Source: https://borsus.wallonie.be/home.html

Valérie De Bue Minister of Civil Service Matters, Administrative Simplification, Child Benefits, Tourism, Heritage and Traffic Safety    Source: https://debue.wallonie.be/home.html

Bernard Clerfayt Minister of the Brussels-Capital Region, responsible for Employment and Vocational Training, Digitalisation, Local Authorities and Animal Welfare    Source: https://clerfayt.brussels/ 

Frédéric Daerden Minister of the French Community for e-Government, Budget and Administrative Simplification   Source: https://daerden.cfwb.be

Oliver Paasch Minister-President; Minister of the German-speaking Community (Ministerpräsident der deutschsprachigen Gemeinschaft Belgiens)   Source: http://oliver-paasch.eu/home/

Bruno Hick Head of the Department of Informatics   Source: http://www.dglive.be/

In 2018, the Steering Body for the Flemish Information and ICT Policy became fully active as the main governance body for the Flemish information and ICT policy. In 2020, a new Strategic Plan for the Steering Body was adopted outlining the priorities with regard to information and ICT policy for the Flemish administration and local authorities for the period 20202024. In the framework of this strategic plan, a digital government security strategy and a digital government data strategy were defined, together with a digital government service delivery strategy. In 2023, an integrated Flemish digital strategy for the whole of the Flemish government, economy and society will be formulated. 

Regional eGovernment efforts are coordinated by dedicated units or bodies set up by the regional executives: the Flanders Digital Agency in Flanders, the eWBS in Wallonia and the WalloniaBrussels Federation, and the Brussels Regional Informatics Centre (BRIC) in the Brussels-Capital Region. 

In 2020, the Walloon government decided to set up a Chief Information Officer function for the Walloon Public Service, in charge of addressing the challenges related to digital administration. This is a major strategic decision in the context of the digital transformation of the Walloon administration.   

Barbara Van Den Haute Administrateur-Generaal, Flanders Digital Agency   Source: https://www.vlaanderen.be/digitaal-vlaanderen

Nicolas Locoge Director-General of the Brussels Regional Informatics Centre (BRIC)   Source: http://bric.brussels/en/about-the-bric/structure

Oliver Schneider Assistant Director General Transition Towards Digital   Source: http://www.federation-wallonie-bruxelles.be/

Géraldine Grosjean Managing Director eAdministration and Simplification Unit (eWBS)   Source: https://ensemblesimplifions.be/

To implement the new IT governance mentioned above, the Brussels-Capital Region has set up three committees: 

• The IT Steering Committee, made up of the ten regional institutions with the largest IT budgets, which is responsible for ensuring transversality by integrating the realities of the various regional administrations, and aiming to harmonise and reuse all types of shareable components available for the implementation of IT projects within the Region; 

• The Regional Committee for Advice and Validation of Architecture and Data Exchange, which is responsible for guaranteeing IT architectural coherence based on the different regional realities and market trends; and 

• The Digital and IT Steering Committee, which is responsible for identifying the main challenges facing the Brussels-Capital Region in terms of digital transition. 

From now on, BRIC, currently IT services producer and provider, will embody this new open and collaborative governance and become the orchestrator of IT services for the entire Brussels ecosystem. As such, it sits on all three committees. In this context, BRIC is setting up a single Citizen Relationship Management (CRM Salesforce) Platform for the Brussels-Capital Region. This platform will make available to citizens and companies innovative and efficient services based on data from authentic sources, in compliance with the Once-Only principle and the GDPR. It will ensure coherence and mutualisation, both in terms of project implementation and the management of operations necessary for the proper functioning of the platform. The deployment of 16 projects within this platform by 2024 is financed by the Recovery and Resilience Facility. 

At the end of 2014, the Walloon Agency of Telecommunications became the Walloon Digital Agency (Agence du numérique), a subsidiary of the Enterprise and Innovation Agency, which is in charge of promoting the development of ICT in the region, while also providing operational and expert support to Walloon administrations and municipalities.  

The Brussels government has asked BRIC to set up a Regional IT Procurement Office for all IT purchases in the region. The expected benefits are: 

• To increase the negotiating power with the main IT suppliers and thus make substantial savings; 

• To limit the environmental impact of IT equipment, in particular through the development of a circular management of the latter; and 

• To streamline the tools, software, infrastructure and IT architecture. 

The main responsibility of the Flanders Digital Agency is to determine the strategic aims and priorities for the transformation of the Flemish government into a data-driven government, while taking part in eGovernment projects in an advisory and supportive role. The Agency is also in charge of developing eGovernment-related knowledge and skills, supporting digital transformation, coordinating and providing incentives, and creating a generic eGovernment infrastructure to facilitate cooperation among the different entities within the Flemish administration and the local authorities. This generic eGovernment infrastructure consists of a number of eGovernment building blocks (eID and trust services, electronic documents, eProcurement, authentic sources, etc.) that can be used as shared systems to improve existing (electronic) service delivery and streamline government operations. The Agency also provides additional funding for cross-departmental eGovernment projects (Flanders Radically Digital II projects) and coordinates the government digitalisation projects that are part of Flemish Resilience, the Flemish recovery plan after the COVID-19 crisis. 

In addition, the Flemish Data Utility Company, created at the end of 2022, wants to stimulate citizens’ trust in sharing data by focusing on responsible and secure data sharing, as well as to support the Flemish economy by making data more findable and exchangeable, and by building bridges between citizens, companies and associations for better cooperation. The company acts as a neutral third partner and catalyst for innovative data initiatives to stimulate economic and social prosperity in Flanders.  

In the spring of 2021, the Brussels Region, the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) launched the Artificial Intelligence for the Common Good Institute (FARI). FARI and BRIC are working together on a roadmap for the development of AI in the Brussels Region. The objective is to have a development framework, to guarantee the coherence of projects and also to rely on knowledge sharing. The collaboration concerns: 

• Support services (e.g. training and development of PoCs of software solutions) to profit and non-profit organisations, and public organisations in areas such as AI education, healthcare and employment in the Brussels Region; 

• Creation of a multidisciplinary team of experts on AI data and robotics to support the public services provided by the Brussels-Capital Region and the digital transition; and 

• AI services to local authorities, and in particular support to the digital twins, as well as training and consulting activities related to citizen services.