The Once-Only principle means that citizens and companies only need to submit certain information and documents once when applying for government and public services. With their consent, public authorities can then re-use and exchange the data with each other.
In the 2021–2025 coalition agreement, the German government itself set the goal of introducing the Once-Only principle as quickly as possible and of standardising legal terms such as “income” (“Einkommen”).
This article (first published in German in the monthly report of the German Federal Ministry of Finance in June 2023) describes the setting and first results of the “Once-Only: Marketplace and Data Matching” network initiated by the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Federal Chancellery, and the Land of Bremen, to develop solutions for the implementation of the Once-Only principle in the German administration.