Registry Information Service on European Residents

Acronym of the case:

RISER

Web address of the case:

http://www.riserid.eu

Country of the case:

Germany , Pan european

Posting Date:

31 May 2007

Last Edited Date:

29 April 2011

Author:

Hendrik Tamm (RISER ID Services GmbH)

interoperability | eIdentification | Base register

Type of initiative

Project or service

Case Abstract

RISER is a Trans-European eGovernment service which was set up to offer official civil registry information to companies and administrations from across Europe in an easy to access manner. The service is supplied by national or local authorities with data from the respective registries. It provides uniform and multilingual access to its customers via a secure internet infrastructure based on open standards. RISER offers a Single-Point-of-Access and enables its customers to submit inquiries without knowing in advance of the diversified requirements to access the desired data in the various Member States. The owner of RISER is the RISER Informationsdienst GmbH.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Efficiency & Effectiveness, Benchmarking | eIdentity and eSecurity | Services for Businesses | High Impact Services with Pan-European Scope | Interoperability

Sector

Crime, Justice and Law | Internal market

Date

January 2004 to December 2010

Date operational

August 2006

Target Users

Administrative | Business (industry) | Business (SME)

Target Users Description

Verification of address information by accessing civil registries is one of the most frequently used services offered by public administrations in the EU Member States. The overall number of requests in the EU27 by private companies and public administrations is estimated at 1.3 billion. RISER market research has shown that about 1% of the total amount of requests is cross-border requests. Due to an increasing mobility inside the European Market the share of cross-border requests is expected to increase. Today Businesses spend on average 957 million EUR every year to gather this registry information.

The main target groups of the RISER Service are companies and public administrations. Both groups have a demand for official address information from population registers to verify client or citizens data. The precise target groups are:

- Mail Order Companies - To verify customer addresses in the pre-sales and post-sales phase to avoid undeliverable mailing or non-paid invoices.
- Banks/Insurance Companies - Require registry information to update their customer databases. Recent legal changes on a European level have obligated banks to validate their customer information continuously.
- Public Administrations - For public services the verification of citizen address information is important in multiple cases, e.g. police, social security or management of penalties.
- eBusiness companies - To verify customer addresses in the online transactions to avoid fraud and to reduce mail returns.
- Credit Agencies - To evaluate the reliability of customer address information for other companies in the consumer business.
- Encashment Companies - Require verified address information in the process of debt collection.
- National Service Providers - National or regional registry information services maintain online portals, which enable end-user customers to request verified address information.
- Solicitors/lawyers - Require registry information to deliver official doc

Scope

Pan-European

Status

Operation

Language(s)

English | German

Policy Context and Legal Framework

The availability of valid address information of your customers is crucial for doing any kind of business or providing public services. As such the access to this information is of paramount importance for businesses and administration. The most common and secure way to verify this address information is to inquire into the public population registers. On a national level, such inquiries are one of the most frequented services of public administration.

All Member States of the European Union have their national or local authorities hold civil registers on their residents. But every Member State has organised this civil registration in its own way. Therefore, businesses and administrations which need registry information within the European Single Market face 27 different administrative processes to access this information. The different legal and organisational requirements of each state, as well as the language barriers that exist, make it intricate and costly for potential customers to request such information.

RISER offers significant contribution to economic cohesion and single-market through cross-border services designed to reduce wastage and increase efficiency of European business and administration.

A very important issue for RISER in
its relation to the processing of personal data is privacy protection and
IT-security. The RISERid consortium spent enormous efforts to make the RISER
service a benchmark for compliance in privacy protection and data security in
the field of address verification services. As a result RISER became the first pan-European eService certified by the European Privacy Seal EuroPriSe.

As a trans-European eService closely
connected to the policy area of population registration the RISERid Consortium
performed a number of important dissemination activities. The most important
activity was for sure the annual Conference on eServices in European Civil
registration which made RISER a unique platform for knowledge exchange in the
area of population registration. As an outcome of the various discussions
within the consortium and with external experts the consortium formulated a
number of opinions on topics like interoperability of European eServices and
social dimensions of public registers.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

IT infrastructures and products

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Mainly (or only) open standards

Funding source

Public funding EU

Project size

Implementation: €1,000,000-5,000,000

Implementation and Management Approach

RISER was initiated in 2004 under the eTEN-Programme of
the European Commission to achieve a Trans-European eGovernment service
enabling public and private organisations to verify individuals' identities in
official population registers throughout Europe.
When the market validation phase of RISER was successfully completed in 2006
the consortium started the initial deployment of the service. A number of high
aims were defined for the RISER initial deployment (RISERid) project. During
the 53 months of the RISERid project most of the objectives have been
fulfilled. For sure the most important achievement was the establishment of the
RISER ID Services GmbH which is the centre of all technical and operational
activities connected to the service. Today the RISER service is supplied with
data by national or local authorities from the population registers of twelve
European Member States which include Austria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary,
Ireland, Italy, Sweden, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Finland and Slovenia.

The following public and private partners form the RISER Consortium:

- Landesamt fÃ¼r BÃ¼rger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten Berlin, Germany, (http://www.berlin.de/labo)
- RISER Informationsdienst GmbH (project-coordinator), Germany, (http://www.riser.eu.com)
- Fraunhofer-Institut FOKUS, Germany, (http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/home/)
- KDZ Zentrum fÃ¼r Verwaltungsforschung, Austria, (http://www. kdz.or.at)
- Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland; (http://www.wit.ie)
- UnabhÃ¤ngiges Landeszentrum fÃ¼r Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein, Germany; (http://www.datenschutzzentrum.de)
- IDOM 2000, Hungary; (http://www.idom2000.hu/)
- ARAM, Poland; (http://www.aram.com.pl/)
- AS Andmevara, Estonia, (http://www.andmevara.ee/)
- Wirtschafts-Informations-Dienst GmbH, Germany (http://www.wid-gmbh.de)

Technology solution

The innovative software solution of RISER is built by using the Java architectural framework. This guarantees a high level of portability and
independence of proprietary platforms as well as adherence to
standards. The system uses mature internet communication technologies
(SOAP, SSL and HTTP) that are widely adopted and also have been shown to
work successfully in many business and administrative contexts. RISER
relies on technologies that are open source.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

The EU Commission has
applauded RISER as a
success story for eGovernment. The objective of the introduction on to
the market of an online service for address searches has been achieved. Cited
among the success factors was the exemplary implementation of data privacy
protection and the integration of the different citizen registration systems in
Europe. With this, RISER represents a role
model for forthcoming eGovernment proposals of the Europe 2020 Strategy.
With start-up funding from the EU, a company has since developed that is firmly
positioned in the market and whose online service was recently certified with
the European Privacy Seal, EuroPriSe.

Since 2004 RISER underwent a phase of
excellent growth in its business development. In 2010 the RISER ID Services
GmbH showed an annual turnover of 10.3 million EURO. The number of inquiries
processed by the service has also been increased. Still below the initial
expectations are the numbers of trans-border inquiries submitted by RISER
customers. Nevertheless the RISER ID Services GmbH has a solid groundwork for
the future full deployment of the RISER service as a trans-European eService.

Track record of sharing

As the service has been implemented in a number of Member States RISER has contributed to the academic and public discussion on eGovernment issues in Europe. RISER became a unique platform for stakeholders in European civil registration by organising several international Conferences on eServices in European Civil Registration.

Lessons learnt

Each European Member State has specific legal and organisational requirements in civil registration. The complex situation of responsibility, idiosyncratic requirements and language barriers make it very hard for customers and administrations to access registry information from public registers in Europe.

In such Member States where registry data from official population registers is not accessible for Business (e.g. due to data protection reasons), private vendors of personal data have a dominant market position. The presence of such privately kept address databases supports the abuse of personal data because privacy protection regulations can not be executed effectively. The highest level of privacy protection of personal data is provided where registry information from public registers is accessible to third parties that are able to prove a legal interest in the data (e.g. contractual relationship). Therefore the authority is in full control of which business customers have access and for what reasons the personal data is provided.

To reach the organisational interoperability between RISER and a civil registration authority is a lot more complicated than just the implementation of technical services between both parties. In particular, the differing national legal regulations make it problematic to combine the national offers in a single trans-European service.

Multimedia Content Select a Tab

There isn't any image for this case

There isn't any Video for this case