Belgium uses cloud computing to prepare for EU presidency

Huddle will help the government organise conferences and prepare for negotiations

Belgium’s six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union starts in July

The Belgian Federal Public Service (FPS) Social Security is using cloud computing technology to prepare for the country’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The presidency will last for six months and begin in July.

The FPS Social Security’s EU 2010 presidency team will access inter-company collaborative tools via cloud solution Huddle. This will allow it to organise conferences and meetings and prepare relevant documents for negotiations.

As a result, more than 100 employees at national and local public institutions, as well as non-governmental organisations, research centres and universities who are contributing towards the presidency can now collaborate on files, share discussions, manage approvals and schedule events.

Belgium’s six-month presidency will see FPS Social Security deal with all matters surrounding social policy issues.

This will involve partaking in negotiations as well as organising conferences and meetings to drive social protection in Europe.

The project will require the Belgian FPS Social Security to share documentation and schedule events with other stakeholders, but the FPS Social Security felt that there was not enough capacity in its in-house network, shared drives and email system.

Problems that occurred in the lead-up to the presidency include staff exceeding email storage limits, which made it increasingly difficult for workers to collaborate on projects.

When input on documents was required from multiple parties, the FPS Social Security team was also faced with numerous versions of a file, meaning that it was difficult to establish which was the final draft.

“We needed a system that was accessible to contributors from both inside and outside of the organisation, while at the same time enabling us to limit the accessibility of sensitive documents to specific users,” said Max Raets, policy officer at FPS Social Security.

“Huddle presented us with the ideal way to collaborate and share information with the outside world when organising events such as our scientific conferences. Thanks to Huddle, our shared network drive for the presidency project is obsolete and, for some projects, Huddle has replaced email completely.”