An eight-year-old vision.
A two-minute install.
Common Ground is the architecture the Dutch local-government movement has been chasing since 2017. The model is sound. The result on a citizen's screen still arrives slowly. This page is what Common Ground actually is, where it stands today, and how a Nextcloud install closes the gap to two minutes.
all open-source
to working solution
support is optional
implementers
and counting
Three apps that ship impact on day one.
Start with what your WOO coordinator, GGU contact, or procurement committee is asking for today. All open-source, GDPR-compliant, free to install from the app store.
What Common Ground actually is.
Started in 2017 inside the Vereniging van Nederlandse Gemeenten (VNG) as part of the broader Samen Organiseren movement. The trigger was concrete: 342 municipalities ran fragmented IT, all duplicating the same citizen data, all paying two dominant vendors for monolithic suites. The Avg and the Wet open overheid added regulatory pressure the legacy stack could not meet. The response was a shared vision, captured in six principles.
Store once, retrieve via API, no copies. The source system owns the truth, every other system asks.
See OpenRegisterThe principles come from the original cg-vision document on GitHub. A common myth is that Common Ground has five principles. The number five refers to the five-layer model below.
Governance sits at VNG Realisatie, the executing arm of the VNG, funded through the Gezamenlijke Gemeentelijke Uitvoering (GGU). The Common Ground Board, chaired by a gemeentesecretaris, sets direction. A Strategische Leverancierstafel advises from the vendor side. Common Ground is a thematic architecture inside GEMMA, the broader reference architecture every Dutch municipality is supposed to follow.
The 5-lagen model.
The model splits any government system into five horizontal layers. Each layer is independently addressable. In theory you can swap a process-layer vendor without touching your data layer. In practice that swap is rare.
NLX was the original integration-layer product. The Programmeringsraad GDI declared FSC (Federatieve Service Connectiviteit) the standard in December 2024, in effect from 2025. The standard work survives, the product changed.
Where it stands in 2026.
The vision is from 2017. The Programmaplan Common Ground 2025 itself states that complete municipal coverage is expected for years to come. Programme budget for 2025: €6.4 M. Projected savings if fully realised: €200–300 M on ICT, €1–2 billion per year on primary processes. Those projections are kwalitatief, not bookable.
The market picture (the most-recent disaggregated public data is from 2018, so treat the percentage as a directional indicator):
- Centric and PinkRoccade together still supply core applications to roughly 90% of municipalities. Source: consultancy.nl, Burgerzaken-ICT marktanalyse.
- Dimpact, the cooperative behind the Open suite, has 73 member municipalities. PodiumD Zaak, its joint MijnOmgeving + zaakafhandeling stack, is rolling out at 40+ of them. Kampen targets 1 January 2027 to fully replace eSuite. Eighteen to thirty months for a medium municipality is typical, not exceptional.
- Roxit's Rx.Mission stack reports 160+ organisations on a Common-Ground-aligned platform. Source: Roxit, Binnenlands Bestuur, March 2025.
PBLQ called the vision mystiek in 2022 and recommended een stevige interventie. The VNG's own Programmaplan 2025 risk register rates "Onduidelijke leveranciersstrategie" as medium-likelihood, high-impact. The same document looks to Denmark's KOMBIT (started 2009) as the inspiration model. That is a tacit acknowledgment that the Dutch consensual approach has under-delivered.
"Vendor lock-in blijft bestaan." VNG, Programmaplan Common Ground 2025, risk register #9
Why it doesn't reach the citizen.
Three reasons compound. None of them are about the architecture itself. All three are about the path from architecture to a working install.
- StUF will not die voluntarily. The legacy SOAP message standard is officially being phased out by the ZGW APIs, but no end-date has been set. Municipalities still tender for StUF interfaces in 2026. WeAreFrank built Open Zaakbrug precisely because the phase-out is open-ended.
- Eight years, three product retirements. ZDS was abandoned. NLX was retired in favour of FSC. StUF is on a slow phase-out without a deadline. The vision is durable. The products keep getting replaced. Municipal CIOs are cautious for good reason.
- Five layers needed end-to-end. Most municipalities have one or two layers modernised. To show a citizen their case status in real time, all five layers have to talk to each other. Few do. MijnOverheid surfaces some zaken, but coverage and freshness depend on whether the municipality's case-system pushes notifications.
Common Ground+ in two minutes.
We took the five-layer model and built every layer as a Nextcloud app. Install from the app store. Two minutes from click to running. The configuration to wire up your data sources is the work you would do anywhere. The difference is that everything is on one platform your team already logs in to.
| Layer | Common Ground component | Conduction app | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Interactie | OIP, MijnOmgeving | Nextcloud + ZaakAfhandelApp | Citizen and employee surface, in the workspace they already use |
| 2 · Proces | Open Zaak, ZAC | ZaakAfhandelApp + DocuDesk | Case workflow, document handling, audit trail |
| 3 · Integratie | FSC, Open Notificaties | OpenConnector | REST, SOAP, GraphQL, file drops, queues, federation included |
| 4 · Service | ZGW APIs (Zaken, Documenten, Besluiten, Catalogi) | OpenConnector | Standard ZGW endpoints exposed automatically |
| 5 · Data | Registers | OpenRegister | Typed registers, schema, audit log, citation-stable IDs |
The "+" is the workspace layer the official model leaves blank. Mail, calendar, contacts, files, video calls, all already in your Nextcloud. Citizens reach you on the same platform your case-handlers work in. No second login, no third procurement, no separate vendor for the surface.
What two minutes covers. The two minutes covers the install: app store, enable, first register live. Connecting to BRP or BAG, configuring FSC, and migrating from your existing ZGW stack is real work. You are not skipping the migration. You are starting it on a workspace that ships the integration tools as standard apps.
A government-only Nextcloud framework.
€250 per component per month.
Don't want to run it yourself? We host the same stack on a managed tenant for public-sector clients. No Files, no Talk, no Mail, no Calendar, just the Common Ground+ components your case workers actually use. We provision, install, monitor, patch, and back up.
Available to public-sector clients only. We verify eligibility (KvK record, public-body status) when you reach out. Hosted on Cyso under ISAE 3402 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, Dutch jurisdiction, EU data, no US sub-processor.
Three apps that fill the layers on day one.
Start with the three apps that cover the data, service and process layers. All open-source, AVG-compliant, free to install from the app store.