On Friday March 11 Honorable Prime Minister Mrs. Sarah Wescot-Williams and Mr. Udo Aron of USONA signed the financial agreement of the precious project "VGO". VGO is the acronym of "Versterking Gegevensbeheer Overheid", which stands for reinforcement of the data management of the Government. Both public and business will benefit from this project.
The VGO-project aims to establish the long lasted data connections between the various departments of the government. During the project a computer system will be designed and put in operation that allows departments to interchange information about customers and products. Examples of benefits of VGO are that departments can subscribe to receive a message if a new company is established and have all basic information available when the new business man comes to their department for service. Another example is that VGO makes it possible for the labor office to exchange information electronically with for example VGZ to tell about employers and employees that are entitled to VGZ services.
VGO will furthermore upgrade the complete Information Management structure of the Government, establish base registries for persons, businesses and vehicles and act as the back-office information supplier of the parallel developed Public Service Center. In that way the government can deliver better and faster service to the public.
VGO is an ambitious project with high stakes and even higher benefits for both the government, the public and in general the development of our country. The VGO system will not hold any data itself but as information broker it will be highly secured and measures will be taken in the design to prevent any connection or exchange without a backing legislation.
VGO is funded by the Dutch government through USONA. USONA agreed to fund the project for the amount of almost 2 million guilders. The project is managed by a team of specialists headed by program managers of BAK. The IT Development team is working closely together with the department of ICT and all involved governmental departments to have the VGO system completed and fully operational by the summer of 2012.