OOTS-EMREX “bridge” will increase student mobility in the EU
28 February 2024 | 4 minutes read
The Once-Only Technical System lets EU public authorities securely exchange official documents and data at the request of citizens and businesses as part of cross-border administrative procedures, e.g., when registering an address or vehicle when moving abroad.
The Once-Only Technical System addresses the fact that cross-border administrative procedures are often costly, complicated and time consuming because of the number of pieces of evidence that citizens and businesses need to provide to prove their age, nationality, qualification status or level of education, etc. Thanks to Once-Only, citizens and businesses will no longer need to search, download, and upload their data repeatedly with appropriate savings in both time and costs.
EU Member States went live with the core infrastructure of the Once-Only Technical System in December 2023. Work is now ongoing to connect the many relevant national eGovernment procedure portals and national registers to the Once-Only Technical System. This includes so-called “related systems”, pre-existing EU-wide systems that exchange data across EU borders (such as cross-border vehicle registration).
EMREX is one such related system. EMREX is an independent, international network which unites various actors interested in enhancing student data portability. EMREX’s current use cases, as well as future, use-cases include secondary and tertiary vocational education as well as certificates, recognition of results from a recognition authority, and vocational entitlements in addition to the use cases of EWP systems and other European schemes like Europass.
In 2023, the European Commission and EMREX collaborated to develop a proof-of-concept of a technical “bridge” to connect EMREX to the Once-Only Technical System. Such a bridge would mean that educational institutions that today provide an EMREX interface would be able to connect to the Once-Only Technical System at minimal cost and impact.
Education related procedures are a focus topic for the next Once-Only Projectathon, which will take place on 15-17 May in Brussels. In preparation for the deployment of a potential future production version of such a bridge, it is planned to test the retrieval of education evidences from providers in several Member States at this event using an OOTS-EMREX bridge. The main benefit of the bridge is that it would greatly decrease the cost and impact of connecting to the Once-Only Technical System for educational institutions that use EMREX.
Experts from the European Commission and EMREX recently submitted a paper outlining a proof-of-concept for the EUNIS 2024 congress organised by the European University Information Systems organisation (EUNIS). Learn more about how Once-Only makes it easier for people and businesses to enjoy Europe’s Single Market on the Once-Only hub.