When government organisations share data, they must agree on exactly which data is being shared and how it is exchanged securely. Within the Data Sharing, Poverty and Debt project (Dutch), the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG), software suppliers, and Statistics Netherlands (CBS) are collaborating on this using the Federated Service Connectivity (FSC) standard.
Ruben Dood, the CBS’s Chief Data Officer and Director of Policy Support, explains how data is exchanged in the Data Sharing, Poverty and Debt project.
Why would you like to bring this data together more effectively?
The Netherlands has 342 municipalities, each keeping poverty and debt data in its own system. The aim is to build a nationwide picture by combining data from various sources. At present, this information is spread across organisations, including municipalities, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, the UWV, and the SVB. Governments can use the data more effectively to coordinate support and prevent organisations from working at cross-purposes. Early warning signals, for example, can help keep people from getting into trouble or prevent situations from worsening.
What does that mean in practical terms?
“The project focuses on standardising and optimising data extraction while making it more flexible. This involves using shared definitions, requesting only the needed data, and applying it within agreed frameworks across multiple uses. These steps save time for municipalities and stakeholders and support more consistent registration. They also provide a more reliable nationwide picture of debt and poverty, making differences between municipalities more visible and offering greater insight into the effects of policy choices and support trajectories.”
How does the submission process work?
“Municipalities already hold much of the required data in-house; it simply sits in their systems. Currently, municipalities must periodically prepare this data correctly and manually upload it to the CBS. This is time-consuming and error-prone. With an API, municipalities can automate much of this process. The data itself doesn’t change; only the method of submission does.”
Where did you encounter challenges?
“A lot has already been done in the Netherlands to promote standardisation and uniformity. However, differences between municipalities persist in practice, both in the data itself and in the technology. As a result, the API method will not work everywhere straight away. Municipalities must be able to make data from their systems available to the CBS, either directly or through a data hub.”
Privacy and security play a big role in data sharing. How have you handled that?
“Protecting privacy is 1 of the CBS’s core tasks. Strict requirements apply across our processing systems to safeguard privacy. The information the CBS ultimately publishes never concerns individuals or households but always concerns groups.
Even within this project, organisations collect data at the individual level, for instance to create municipal overviews. The principle of data minimisation applies here: only requesting data that is truly necessary. For example, checking whether someone is an adult may not require a birthdate; a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ may suffice.”
How can organisations verify that it really is the CBS requesting the data?
“This is where the Federated Service Connectivity (FSC) standard comes in. With this standard, organisations can recognise each other and pre-agree on which APIs each party is authorised to use. This allows the data holder to determine with great certainty whether a request genuinely comes from the CBS and whether the CBS has access to the specific API.”
What can other government organisations learn from this?
“Through APIs, organisations can exchange only the data needed at that moment. Currently, they often share entire files, even though the receiving party only needs a small portion. In many cases, data no longer needs to be exchanged in bulk. Organisations simply make an agreed dataset or response available. The data remains at the source until another party requests it.”
And what happens when more APIs are added in the future?
“Data Sharing, Poverty and Debt is just one project, and adding more APIs means more management. FSC simplifies this by providing APIs consistently. Organisations can also use the same FSC provision across multiple APIs, keeping the landscape manageable and potentially reducing long-term costs.”
How APIs, FSC, and the Federated Data System Connect
- The Data Sharing, Poverty and Debt project discusses with stakeholders why data is shared, what data is required, and how it is used.
- Through APIs, systems can offer and exchange this data consistently, ensuring only necessary data is transferred, almost in real time.
- FSC ensures that organisations can trust each other technically. It helps locate the right API, secures the connection, and verifies whether an organisation is authorised to use it.
- The Federated Data System brings together the agreements that allow governments to share data in a standardised way, with APIs and FSC playing a crucial role.
