Basisregistratie Personen (BRP)

The Dutch population register: municipalities and the non-residents register, who may receive data, and why it is the authentic source behind PID.

The Dutch population register, governed by the Wet basisregistratie personen. Municipalities record the personal data of residents; the register for non-residents, the RNI, records people with a relationship to the Netherlands who do not live here. Together they are the authentic source for personal data in Dutch government processes, and registration is where a BSN is assigned.

Access is not open. Data are provided to bodies that have a statutory basis for receiving them, for defined purposes, and the register records what was provided to whom. A private organisation therefore cannot simply query the BRP to check a customer, which is why identity verification in the private sector leans on documents - reading the chip of an identity document - rather than on the register.

That difference matters for anything wallet-shaped. PID has to come from an authentic source, and for the Netherlands the register that actually holds those data is the BRP; a QEAA about a person's attributes is worth more when it can be traced to a register than when it rests on a scan. It also sets up a practical problem worth naming: when a document and a register disagree, or when someone's data in the register are being corrected, a provider needs a route that does not simply refuse the person. The Wet BRP has a correction procedure, and a process that ignores it will eventually meet a customer whose name is spelled differently in two places.