ACROSS

ACROSS improves data exchange between EU member states' public services by prioritising citizens’ privacy. The project will last three years and is funded by the European Commission.

With the ongoing digitalisation of society, data exchange between public services of different European member states has become increasingly important. The 2018 Single Digital Gateway (SDG) aims to facilitate data exchange and support EU citizens who live, work, study or do business in different member states by using a common digital gateway (to be termed ‘Your Europe’ portal) where they can find all relevant information, procedures and services. The SDG also entails the Once-Only principle, that will enable public administrations to share data across borders in a secure way, so that citizens do not have to provide the same information multiple times. 

However, as of yet, not all EU citizens have free and easy access to (other) countries’ e-services and in some cases public services are not yet fully digitized. ACROSS will co-design an ecosystem to facilitate these cross-border services, that will eventually contribute to the further implementation of the SDG. The project places the user perspective at its core, ensuring data sovereignty of EU citizens that study or work abroad. Privacy and the needs of citizens will drive the co-creative process of developing technology and resources to increase the interoperability of cross border services. This framework will be tested in three different countries (which are Greece, Germany, Latvia). 

Waag is responsible for the development of a new governance model and the architecture of a (data) governance framework. This framework will be based on existing applications such as the MyData model and will build upon our experiences with Attribute-Based Credentials in the DECODE project. This new governance model and framework, rooted in public values such as transparency and citizen sovereignty, will be designed together with European citizens and implemented in ACROSS. The efforts will culminate in an online platform with various user-centric applications to help citizens maintain control over their data as they move around Europe.