Dutch legislation in plain language

This is how we do it

6 November 2023

HSE Compliance – made easy: that’s what we do at Lexerta. Each department contributes to this in its own way. From product development, we provide smart features in the tools Pharius and RiskReporter. Our accountmanagers and service department helps customers with training, brancheregisters and a well-equipped knowledge base. Our redaction department ensures that customers quickly get to the core of laws and regulations (the requirement). Martijn, team leader of the redaction department, likes to explain how we convert (often complicated) legislation into jargon-free language.

What is the ’Kern van de Eis’?

Martijn: “Kern van de Eis’ (Core of the Requirement red.) is a concise summary that highlights the essential content of a law, section or article of the law. Most importantly, it is written in jargon-free, plain and easy Dutch. Or ‘Jip and Janneke’ language as some will say. Also, where relevant, the ‘kern van de Eis’ contains links between European directives and national laws and regulations.

The ‘Kern van de Eis’ gives the HSE professional the most important legal information quickly and clearly. So that you understand it easily, without having to sift through long and complex legal texts. It is the key to understanding the key points of a legal provision. Of course, in doing so, the core of a law is described somewhat more broadly, moving from paragraph to article of law to an ever deeper level of detail.”

How does the Core of the Requirement
of legislation come about?

The ‘Kern van de Eis’ is compiled by the Lexerta editorial team, which is also responsible for managing all laws and regulations within Pharius and the email service Wijzigingenopmaat.nl.

Martijn: “Compiling the ‘Kern van de Eis’ is done in close cooperation with our partners. We determine together when a law, paragraph or article is interesting enough to provide a powerful summary. Is a law of interest to our clients? Then we dissect it and the redaction department writes a core of this requirement. For this we have established a guideline so that all summaries have the same depth of understanding of the law.

Once written, there is a second person, sometimes an HSE advisor from a partner, who checks the summary. We then place the ‘Kern van de Eis’ with the legislation. This is immediately visible in Pharius as soon as you import or open the requirement. By now we have written and linked some 4000 ‘Kernen van de Eis’ to legislation.”

“So all in all, implementing and keeping current is quite a task. But when I hear the positive feedback you notice immediately that it brings a lot to the customer. That’s what we do it for!”

Keeping up with legislation

“And then you think that’s it,” Martijn says with a broad smile. “But when I tell you that administrative Holland and Europe issue more than 100 changes in laws and regulations every week, you’ll probably understand that we have to review the ‘Kern van de Eis’ with regularity. Or at least have to reassess. Also, the same process runs again.”

“So all in all, implementing and keeping current is quite a task. But when I hear the positive feedback you notice immediately that it brings a lot to the customer. That’s what we do it for!”

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