Anyone with a DigiD can conduct business with the government electronically. Those who are unable, unwilling, or not authorised to do so can be represented by another individual using DigiD Authorisation. However, many government agencies remain unconnected to this service. Digital access for legal representatives and individuals conducting digital dealings with the government on behalf of loved ones is also not yet well-organised. This is improving with the introduction of the new Delegated Access Service (Bevoegdheidsverklaringdienst, or BVD, in Dutch), created by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK).
The BVD enables service providers to verify whether a person or organisation has the legal authority to represent someone else. The first phase is expected to be available from mid-2026. Initially, this will be limited to parents and carers of children up to the age of 12 at government service providers connected to the system. Later, it will also include curators, administrators, and mentors.
Early involvement
The BVD is being extensively tested in practice before its widespread rollout. Mark Arts, implementation manager at the Ministry of BZK: “We want to involve service providers in the rollout of BVD Parental Authority early on. This will enable us to verify whether the entire chain is functioning correctly as a whole. The first login is done on the service providers’ portal. Subsequently, access to the service is granted. With this controlled launch, service providers can get used to the facility and check whether their teams are ready to support it effectively.”
Great need
How were participants found? Arts: “Healthcare providers in particular have an urgent need for BVD Parental Authority. This enables them to determine whether someone has parental authority over a young patient. Together with Nictiz and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, we contacted healthcare providers and their ICT suppliers who have the greatest need for this. Ten healthcare providers and their suppliers are now participating in the initiative. A prerequisite was that they be connected to the Access Grant Service (TVS), which already applies to most of the healthcare sector. We are confident that they will be able to carry out a structured chain test.”
New selection button
Henk van den Akker, Test Manager at Logius, explains: “We are testing the integration between BVD Parental Authority and other systems, for example, whether the facility correctly retrieves and displays data from the Personal Records Database (BRP). After activation, a new selection button appears in TVS for parents who want to log in on behalf of a child under the age of 12. They first identify themselves with their own DigiD. They then see all children under the age of 18 who are registered in the BRP on the BVD Parental Authority screen. Only children under the age of 12 for whom the parent is authorised can be selected.”
Van den Akker continues: “After selection, the parent automatically returns to the service provider’s portal. There, the parent can perform actions on behalf of the child, such as viewing a file or making an appointment. In this way, we perform a few actions to test whether the ‘login on behalf of a child’ process works correctly. Later, we will also add an option for children aged 12 to 16.”
Controlled launch
The use of BVD Parental Authority impacts communication with patients, care processes, collaboration among professionals, record-keeping, and ICT infrastructure. A controlled launch helps organisations prepare for this. Arts explains: “Once the tests are complete, the controlled launch will follow. This involves making BVD Parental Authority available in the production environment to test the provision in practice and gain experience. This makes the transition to a full launch easier. The experiences are recorded in a guide. These lessons learnt help other service providers to scale up to a broad roll-out gradually. We want to be sure that management and service organisations are well prepared.”
The guide will follow after the controlled launch is completed. This is expected to occur before January 2027.
For more information (in Dutch), please visit our page about the Access Grant Service (Toegangsverleningsservice, or TVS, in Dutch).
