Vision of Common Ground

The Common Ground initiatives for Dutch municipalities focus on modernizing and making municipal information more flexible. The core of this approach includes separating data from work processes and applications, querying data directly at the source rather than copying and storing it frequently. The key principles are:

  1. Data are made uniform.
  2. APIs are used for data exchange.
  3. A common integration layer is used.
  4. Data remain in the source.

At its core, Common Ground is all about this: reforming municipal information services by handling data differently. For example, we disconnect data from work processes and applications. And we query data at the source, instead of copying and storing it frequently. With the redesign of information services, municipalities can radically improve their services and operations. This enables municipalities to respond to social tasks in a modern and flexible manner.

"To enable further digitization of government, we also need a more modern design of government architecture. 

Common Ground is not only essential in a technical sense for our digital future. Precisely also realization principles such as organizing together and open source will facilitate innovations and better market operations.
In other words, Common Ground is part of our strategy and further modernization of our portfolio and business model. 

We are not the initiator of freeBRP for nothing. The first software product for basic registrations that is open source available to Dutch municipalities. And also the first system for a core process to be released as open source by an existing supplier. In our history there have been several occasions when we were the founding father and that is the case again with vrijBRP. 

We believe that the market and government need to learn to work together differently and that is why we believe in Common Ground."

Mike de Ruiter, managing director

Common Ground has quickly gained widespread support and name recognition among municipalities, other government organizations and market participants. Meanwhile, several teams have begun developing applications according to the principles of Common Ground.

Did you know that freeBRP, our initiative, has silver status on Common Ground's portfolio? Check out the total portfolio.

What steps have we already taken?

Open Source

  • The freeBRP counter application and back-end have been made open source available
  • Our website solutions are based on the open source platform Drupal

Organizing together = Community

  • We have a community platform for all our clients where knowledge and resources are shared.
  • When we build commissioned add-ons for our software, we do not make them freely available to all our customers
  • For each product line, we have a community panel that can actively co-determine the roadmap

Open integrations

  • All our product lines support standard integrations, such as StUF links and APIs
  • We have an open product principle, allowing all products to be openly interfaced with third-party systems, the customer determines
  • As Shift2, we actively contribute to the development of new integrations and standards.
  • We co-build the Commonground Gateway, the open source portal to define and route integrations

Our cloud setup is Haven proof

Within the hosting of our solutions, we have implemented and strengthened the Haven standard with elements from the CIS benchmark, Zero Trust and the DigiD assesment, among others. This setup is the blueprint for new initiatives and a number of our core products are already using this setup in production.

Compliancy, security and privacy

Privacy and security are integral to the design and are secured by working according to the ISO 27001 (Information Security) and ISO 9001 (Quality Management) processes with an appropriate scope "Developing, selling, implementing, hosting and managing Web applications."

What steps have we already taken?

Please feel free to contact us

If you choose Shift2

When you choose Shift2, you are not only choosing a partner that strives every day to improve the digitization of government. You are also choosing a partner that understands that innovation and change is necessary. Embracing the Common Ground principles is not marketing for us, it is evidently our strategy. Not only in technical further development, but also in the further development of our models. We really apply Common Ground and actively contribute, because we understand that market and government need to start working together in a renewed way. We are in motion, together with you! We are Shift2.

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