Municipality of Haarlemmermeer

The Digital Government Act (Wdo) requires government agencies to accept all login means admitted to the "Access System”. But how do you efficiently connect multiple digital services to different eIDs without descending into chaos? Haarlemmermeer deployed Signicat's eID Hub six years ago.

Haarlemmermeer, with over 160,000 inhabitants, is the fourteenth largest municipality in the Netherlands. The municipality between Amsterdam, Haarlem and Leiden consists of 31 villages and cores, with Hoofddorp as the administrative center. With 160,000 jobs, Haarlemmermeer is an important source of employment. Half of these are linked to Schiphol Airport.

E-forms

As one of the largest municipalities in the Netherlands, Haarlemmermeer faces significant administrative challenges, for example in communicating with citizens and businesses. E-forms play an important role in this. With these forms, residents and organizations can report a fallen tree or a loose paving stone digitally, as well as apply for permits or benefits.

"In 2018, we were not satisfied with the external services regarding our e-forms," says Atilla Vigh, enterprise architect at the municipality of Haarlemmermeer. "After a thorough preliminary investigation, it was then decided to build our own application, which would allow residents and organizations to digitally request the various services of the municipalities. Those residents and organizations must then be able to log in with DigiD and eHerkenning, respectively. We wanted to have one party that could take care of that for us."

Routing facility

Haarlemmermeer found the solution in the Signicat Identity Broker (Signicat eID Hub). A digital service is connected to this routing facility via a single connection. Signicat then ensures that all desired eIDs are available via the hub, and takes care of updates, upgrades and version management of the eIDs.

The Signicat Identity Broker helps public service providers comply with the Digital Government Act (Wdo), which will be a reality from July 1, 2023 and is now being implemented in stages. The Wdo requires service providers to accept authorized login means. These may include means from other European countries. This is the so-called "acceptance obligation. Signicat guarantees that all authorized eIDs will also be connected to the broker. Without the need to create separate connections for this.

Lean and mean

"We have now built just under sixty e-forms. Of those sixty, fifty have a DigiD or eHerkenning login. No more forms will be added to that," says Vigh. "The e-forms for applying for permits and social services are popular. In total, it is estimated that there are 30,000 login attempts per year, including failed login attempts."

As a "pioneer user," the Municipality of Haarlemmermeer is satisfied with Identity Broker and with the cooperation with Signicat. "Signicat has made the process for unlocking digital services as 'lean and mean' as possible. Both the technology and the support from Signicat are just perfect. If there is an issue once, it is solved immediately."

A recent step is the replacement of the self-built e-forms solution with the Common Ground-based OpenForms solution. "Signicat has once again demonstrated its flexibility by supporting both OpenForms and the self-built e-forms via the same interface during the transition," concludes Vigh.