Reprinted from the article by Yannis Chourmouziadis at Interoperable Europe (IA) for the Interoperable Europe Act, an initiaitve with the goal of improving digital public services in the EU that need cross-border data flows. In pursuit of the EU’s digital targets for 2030 and a fully functioning Digital Single Market, improved cross-border interoperability will help to interconnect public administrations at European, national, regional and local level by working together closely to deliver trans-European digital public services and reduce fragmentation and silos. See more here.

Primero: UNICEF's open source software for social services

Primero is an open source software that supports digital transformation in social services. It helps workers manage protection-related data, with tools that facilitate child protection and gender-based violence case management and incident monitoring, as well as family tracing and reunification. Primero has 83 implementations in the world today across 67 countries and territories. For example, in Europe Primero was launched in Romania on 25 July 2022 by the Ministry of Family, Youth, and Equal Opportunities, through the National Authority for the Protection of Children's Rights and Adoption (ANPDCA), in partnership with UNICEF Romania and Sera Romania. Since then, almost 14,000 Ukrainian children who fled the war have been successfully registered on Primero, out of an estimated number of 37,000 children in Romania. Primero is a result of a private-public partnership between UNICEF and Salus CM, a US-based company specializing in social, health, and human services, responsible for the development and long-term maintenance of Primero.

Primero’s use, its open source nature, and its role as a Digital Public Good

Primero was designed to support the collaboration of different actors who are managing data about vulnerable children and survivors of violence. The OS provides a common, secure system to protect data and relieve some of the information management burden from social workers and protection professionals.

According to the interviewees, because the software is open source it becomes more transparent, customisable, and fosters a shared sense of ownership among the participating actors, such as governments and tech organisations. It also allows collaboration, and enhances cost-effectiveness, making it accessible for the budget of smaller organisations. It also aligns with UNICEF’s operational approach, which is to help enable governments to own their social services. Additionally, through being collaborative, it can support agile software development methodologies within the public sector, an area often hindered by innovation challenges.

The Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), a multi-stakeholder initiative that aims to accelerate the attainment of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods certified Primero as a DPG in 2022 and 2023. That confirms that Primero adheres to the DPGA principles and best practices and directly contributes to the SDGs 2030 agenda.