The role of public-service ecosystems
We interact with public services and government administrations every day: submitting a permit application, applying for financial support, filing a legal claim, or sending documents to a customs authority for goods crossing an international border.
As citizens and businesses, we may think that each of these interactions involves a single government organization. Behind the scenes, however, government agencies depend on the web of other public authorities, employers, banks, healthcare and social-service organizations, courts, businesses, and international partners.
Take a maternity benefit payment: before the responsible government agency can determine eligibility and initiate the payment, it may need information from an employer, another department, a hospital, and a healthcare insurer. All this information needs to reach the right agency and the right system, move through every step of the process, and ultimately result in the applicant seeing the money in their bank account.
In all these cases, integration between these players becomes vital to the delivery of government and public services. The individual relationships can be G2B (government to business), B2G (business to government), G2G (government to government), or G2C (government to citizen). Although the names are different, they all involve integration between independent organizations, so for simplicity, we can refer to it as B2B integration.
You may think of B2B integration as something manufacturers use to exchange orders with suppliers, or retailers use to connect with thousands of trading partners. But public-sector organizations face a similar integration challenge and use similar solutions, even if the participants, information, and processes are different.
For consumers, the technology behind the service is largely invisible. We do not need to know whether information moves through EDI, APIs, ebXML, AS4, SFTP, or another secure file-transfer protocol. We simply expect a public service to work, and government IT teams must ensure that it does.
It is not a straightforward task. These public-service ecosystems are dynamic and often unpredictable:
- Geopolitical events, public-health emergencies, or economic disruption can cause transaction volumes to rise dramatically, sometimes almost overnight.
- A public agency may need to add another organization or validation step to an existing process.
- A participating organization may change its systems, responsibilities, or way of working, requiring information flows to be adapted quickly.
- The security landscape can be equally unpredictable, as legacy and modern technologies may be used by different organizations, each with its own policies and approaches. One player’s vulnerability may affect the whole network.
Maintaining operational efficiency, adapting information flows quickly, protecting sensitive exchanges, and remaining ready for the unexpected are therefore essential requirements for any public-sector partner integration network.
Modernizing a core system is a serious undertaking, especially when essential public services must keep running for millions of citizens while the system is being rebuilt. Public-sector agencies also need to navigate procurement requirements, long-term planning, and complex technology environments. Choosing a vendor that understands these unique challenges is therefore critical to introducing modern, more efficient capabilities while allowing legacy and modern technologies to work side by side as services evolve.
B2B integration in action across public services
Let’s look at how different public-sector organizations accomplish this in practice.
Delivering citizen benefits
Providing benefits may require information to move between public agencies, employers, healthcare insurers, banks, and other organizations. Germany’s federal employment agency, Bundesagentur für Arbeit, uses Axway B2B Integration as part of the infrastructure that connects more than 100,000 employers and supports information exchange with other government agencies. The agency defeats up to 5 million cyber threats daily, so you can imagine how important it is for these exchanges to remain secure and reliable, even when demand or transaction volumes change.
Enabling secure interagency data exchange
As we have seen, government is not one organization or one IT system: ministries, departments, municipalities, and specialist agencies must exchange information while continuing to use their own applications and processes. The Dutch Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate uses Axway B2Bi to support integration with other government bodies through Digikoppeling and its required ebMS messaging standards. This standards-based approach allows public organizations to exchange information securely and reliably without requiring every participant to use the same internal systems.
Processing permit applications
Public authorities receive permit applications, certificates, and supporting documents from businesses. These requests must reach the internal systems and employees responsible for reviewing and processing them. The Dutch Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate uses Axway B2Bi as part of an automated process that transfers permit applications and supporting documents into its document management system. By reducing manual handling and connecting external submissions with back-office processes, this integration helps the agency manage around 100,000 permit applications annually.
Connecting the justice and legal ecosystem
Justice processes often involve courts, legal professionals, creditors, banks, ministries, and public agencies. In France, ADEC uses Axway B2Bi and Sentinel to automate the exchange of claim files and judicial documents, support debt-related fund transfers, and close files after claims are settled. By connecting 3,000 bailiffs with 110 public and private partners, the platform helps ADEC manage 1.5 million transactions each month with the security, visibility, and reliability required for sensitive legal processes.
Facilitating customs and cross-border trade
Customs clearance requires documents and data to move securely between businesses, customs authorities, and national government systems. When these exchanges depend on manual or fragmented processes, missing or delayed information can slow the movement of goods across borders. The ASEAN Single Window uses Axway B2B Integration gateways to connect the National Single Windows of ten member states, enabling the electronic exchange of cross-border cargo documentation with tracking and end-to-end visibility. Keeping the invisible ecosystem running
As consumers, we may never see the complex ecosystem behind public services, but we depend on it every day. Whether processing benefits, exchanging information between agencies, reviewing permit applications, supporting legal processes, or moving goods across borders, public organizations need critical information to reach the right people and systems securely and reliably. A problem in this process may become a very personal issue for any of us.
When this breaks, it isn’t abstract. A missing document means a customs shipment sits at the border instead of reaching its destination. A stalled data exchange means a permit application waits in a queue instead of reaching the desk that can approve it. A delayed payment means a family waiting on a benefit they’re owed checks their bank account and finds nothing there. These may begin as IT integration problems, but they quickly become real problems for citizens and businesses.
Axway B2B Integration helps government agencies and their partners maintain efficient operations, adapt information flows as requirements change, and protect the exchanges behind crucial public services.
If a stalled data exchange is one of your agency’s real risks, let’s talk about what to do about it.
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