EU Member States note success of first Once-Only Technical System Projectathon

21 April 2023 | 4 minutes read

From 19-21 April 2023, the first Once-Only Technical System (OOTS) Projectathon brought together 25 EU Member States in Brussels in a marathon of peer-to-peer interoperability testing. A Projectathon is a crucial step in the development, testing and deployment into production of the Once-Only Technical System components that underpin a national Once-Only implementation.

Once-Only will help to ease administrative burden on companies, with resource savings even greater for smaller companies with more limited resources.

It will also have great benefits for European citizens. The Once-Only Technical System means that when completing an online procedure, citizens will be able to give their explicit request to retrieve evidence from a competent authority in another Member State. This explicit request triggers the retrieval of evidence from competent authorities across many different sectors through the Once-Only Technical System (education, vehicles, population registers and more).

This Projectathon provided EU countries with an excellent opportunity to verify that their national Once-Only systems or solutions effectively comply with the appropriate specifications, laid out in the Once-Only Technical System Implementing Regulation and Technical Design Documents.

Neutral experts, acting as Monitors, supervised and verified the tests over the three days. The Once-Only Technical System Projectathons are not pass/fail type examinations. Rather, they are a collaborative exercise in understanding technical and operational issues and working together to solve them.

Ahead of the December 2023 legal deadline to implement the Once-Only Technical System, the European Commission is organising two more Projectathons, allowing the participating teams to build on their experiences.

Visit the Once-Only Hub to learn more and keep up to date with the latest news regarding Europe’s Once-Only Technical System.

Participant insights

Get an insider's perspective on the event from participant insights.

“Why did we come as observers and actually quickly became active participants? The efficiency of the event - all the support is here, all the contacts are here, all the answers are in one place"

“When we came here we weren't all ready for testing and we didn't think we would be. However, we had some amazing teams helping us so we managed to finish the first test today so we're really happy"

“For us the Projectathon is a great opportunity to be on the same page with the other member states […] we want to achieve synergies between all EU countries to gain the best product for EU residents”