Project "Total control of register modernisation"

In 2021, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MWIKE), together with the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Home Affairs (BMI) and the federal states of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Hamburg, took over the lead role in the IT Planning Council’s ‘Total Control Register Modernisation’ project on behalf of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The project has the task of advancing the implementation of the objectives of register modernization across departments and levels. The overall programme consists of four pillars:

• interoperable and secure technical architecture
• connectable registers on the part of the registrants
• legal framework for secure and data protection-compliant data exchange
• forward-looking governance

The implementation of the once-only principle for administrative services in the context of register modernisation enables two things: On the one hand, government agencies can easily and securely exchange existing data and evidence. On the other hand, citizens only have to submit evidence once. This results in a high relief in the application for administrative services and the processing times by the administration. In the future, a data protection cockpit will allow citizens to digitally and user-friendly understand which of their data is exchanged between authorities.

In addition to a national Once-Only-Technical-System (NOOTS), the modernisation of the register also focuses on the connection to the European Once-Only-Technical-System in the course of the implementation of the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDG-VO). In addition to simplifying access to administrative services at national level, it will also create a digital cross-border gateway to administrative services of the European Union and its Member States.

In this context, architectural components are currently being tested with the help of several pilot projects. The focus is on the development of the architectural target image and the further development of registers.

A pilot project to connect the commercial register to the WSP.NRW aims to gain important insights for the once-only data exchange in the national once-only technical system. The connection of the commercial register (data provider) to the WSP.NRW (data consumer) is intended to enable the development and testing of missing infrastructure components, which were provided for by the IT planning council in the architectural target image.

A German-Dutch pilot project aims to test a fully functional, media-break-free and officially accepted application according to CSO maturity level 4 for the business registration of a Dutch company in Germany and vice versa. In this context, an eIDAS connector (eIDAS: Electronic IDentification, Authentication and Trust Services. The eIDAS connector enables the use of the European eIDAS network.

In another pilot project, a business registration is being tested by Austrian companies in Germany and vice versa. In this way, further architectural components for the development of cross-border administrative access are tested in the context of the implementation of the SDG Regulation. A key component of this is the SDG connector. This allows the connection of the national Once-Only-Technical-System to the European Once-Only-Technical-System.

In the pilot projects, the WSP.NRW is involved on the part of Germany in the testing of the cross-border connection of the business registration.