Steering the adoption of standard business reporting for cross domain information exchange

Over the years, several governments around the world have introduced a version of Standard Business Reporting (SBR) for information exchange with public agencies. Their main goals are to ease the reporting burden for businesses and the regulatory burden for government agencies. This paper takes a look at the adoption numbers in the Netherlands over multiple years. The objective of this paper is to analyse the adoption rates and explain them by revealing the steering instruments employed by government agencies looking to positive-ly influence SBR adoption. Our dataset consists of the total number of reports submitted using SBR towards the Tax Office, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Education Executive Agency. Quantitative data analysis reveals different adoption rates and patterns in the aforementioned reporting chains. We found that adoption was positively influenced using a deliberate and fine-tuned set of steering instruments, including public-private governance, open communication and knowledge exchange, mandation, software community engagement and technical configuration (use of interfaces that match the sector specific reporting capabilities). When considering these steering instruments, policy makers and practitioners need to balance progressive standard setting and steady implementation.