This table here below aims at providing an overview of all the initiatives, such as the political communications, guidelines, and legislation, related to interoperability that have been put in place in the Netherlands.
National Interoperability Framework
The National Interoperability Framework (NIF) is a set of standards, policies, and guidelines that ensure that information and communication technology (ICT) systems can communicate and share data seamlessly. It promotes the development of interoperable systems that facilitate data exchange and collaboration between different organizations and levels of government. The NIF provides a common language and a framework for ensuring that ICT solutions are compatible, secure, and reliable, which enhances the efficiency of public services and improves citizen outcomes.
Good Practices
This section provides examples at the national level in line with a selection of different thematic areas of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF). Further initiatives and good practices are available in the country’s Digital Public Administration Factsheet.
The Dutch government has a comply-or-explain policy for mandatory open specifications when procuring ICT products or services. The application and assessment procedure for open standards and mandatory open specifications is managed by the Netherlands Standardisation Forum, which has been installed to advise the government on interoperability and ICT standardisation. The Forum is an advisory committee with experts from various government organisations, the business community and academia. Its executive secretariat is housed at Logius, the digital government agency under the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. The Standardisation Forum monitors and measures the adoption of mandatory open specifications through an annual investigation of all mandatory specifications and a semi-annual measurement of specific key internet standards. The upcoming Digital Government Act in the Netherlands provides a mechanism to make specific open specifications mandatory by law. The first specifications to be made mandatory by law are HTTPS and HSTS. Future candidates are DKIM, SPF and DMARC.
With the update in 2022 of the core of NORA, the platform has made user-centricity even more explicit with architecture principle NAP01 Put yourself in the user's shoes that relates to quality objectives of service provisioning and concrete implications. Also, a Program Gebruiker Centraal (UX) is in place. Moreover, by focusing on life events projects, the Netherlands works on improving information and services provided by the government on specific life events, focusing on people. User-centricity is further guaranteed by conducting interviews with citizens and entrepreneurs and together with relevant governmental organisation, in this way, the Netherlands maps out the bottlenecks in communication and services and works on concrete improvements.
NORA facilitates sector-specific and cross-sectoral communities as part of the governmental domain structure, which includes open information specifications and encourages relevant communities to share their results on a national level via the NORA communities. NORA will pass these results through to the international level when appropriate. Currently NORA refers to 12 Base registries and 145 Sector registries.