Social media interaction and online media monitoring using Coosto

Dutch Tax and Customs Administration

This page provides information about the 'social media interaction and online media monitoring' algorithm, which is run through the Coosto programme. This algorithm helps employees answer social media messages, post social media content and analyse online media articles.

Last change on 10th of September 2025, at 15:00 (CET) | Publication Standard 1.0

• Publication category: Other algorithms
• Impact assessment: Field not filled in.
• Status: In use

General information

Theme

Organisation and business operations

Begin date

Field not filled in.

Contact information

[e-mail]

Link to publication website

https://over-ons.belastingdienst.nl/onderwerpen/omgaan-met-gegevens/algoritmeregister/

Link to source registration

https://over-ons.belastingdienst.nl/onderwerpen/omgaan-met-gegevens/algoritmeregister/socialmedia-interactie-en-online-media-monitoring-middels-coosto/

Responsible use

Goal and impact

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The Tax and Customs Administration deploys the Coosto software within 3 work processes:

[1] Employees use Coosto to collect and respond to messages posted by citizens and businesses on various social media channels. Coosto uses the official API channels of social media platforms to collect, organise and display messages to employees. This involves about 150,000 social media messages per year that come in through 28 channels managed by Tax Administration employees. This is done on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and X. Coosto brings these messages together, then distributes them by channel and topic for employees to reply to. This makes for an efficient workflow. It also searches for questions or comments not directly posed to any of these channels through automated searches. Using keywords, public posts are searched for content about the organisations or processes of the Tax and Customs Administration, Supplementary Benefits Service or Customs. This provides opportunities to answer customer questions that would otherwise go unanswered, improve image or clear up misunderstandings.

[2] Employees also use Coosto to plan, create, organise and post proactive communications on those same social media channels. These are messages, images, videos or other content posted on these channels that followers and other users may see when they are active on that particular social media platform or navigate to our specific channels. This therefore involves mass communication from the Tax Administration and not messages at a personal level. As a result, citizens and businesses are proactively made aware of their rights and obligations vis-à-vis the Tax and Customs Administration, Benefits Agency and Customs. Examples include an informative message about the tax return campaign, a reminder for entrepreneurs about a deadline or a message about the possible effects of divorce on one's benefits. By using Coosto, this work can also be done efficiently and centrally.

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Considerations

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[3] Finally, employees use Coosto to search, analyse and report on online media articles about the Tax Office. To make content easily findable in public news, blogs and forums, articles are collected via APIs and fragments are displayed via scraping. Examples include news articles about Box 3 or false self-employment. It is important to have up-to-date insight into what is going on in the media, so that the organisation can respond to relevant developments in society well and in time. There are hundreds of news sites, blogs and forums as well as politicians and other opinion makers that make up society's online playing field. With Coosto, these sources are collected so that analyses and reports are efficiently made to keep colleagues informed about what is going on in society. These insights are used, for instance, to improve letters and processes. Think, for example, of communication about phishing.

• Considerations

Benefits of using Coostoo

Coosto is important for the Tax Administration to efficiently and carefully enable interaction with citizens and businesses via social media channels and to enable staff to collect and share insights on news media. If employees had to perform these work processes on the numerous individual social media channels and news media sites, it would be at the expense of quality, quantity and efficiency. So the algorithm supports employees in organising and executing the various work processes. As a result, fewer employees are needed for execution and citizens and businesses are better served.

[1] In work process 1, Coosto initially ensures that messages made on various social media channels are collected centrally. Some of the messages are automatically categorised and prepared for handling by employees and some are manually assigned by an employee. In this way, questions on a particular topic reach employees who have been trained to do so. The automatic categorisation is always checked by a staff member, ensuring that a message always reaches the right staff member. When an employee sends a reply, Coosto makes sure the message is posted to the right social media channel.

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Human intervention

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[2] In work process 2, Coosto ensures that employees can collaborate on planning, creating and posting content for more than 20 social media channels. For example, employees can send scheduled content to colleagues for review, posts can be copied to other social media channels, drafts can be saved and there is a shared calendar.

[3] In work process 3, Coosto allows employees to use search terms to collect and view online media articles on certain topics. In addition, Coosto provides insight into the reach of these topics by displaying how many accounts have come into contact with the topic. The collection of articles and reach is input for the analysis made by employees.

• Human intervention

Human intervention in the Inland Revenue context means that a competent and knowledgeable staff member plays a substantial role in decision-making.

Coosto is not used to make decisions. The results of searches within Coosto are always reviewed by an employee of the Inland Revenue.

Risk management

The General Administrative Law Act (Awb) requires the government's actions to be transparent and lawful. The Tax Administration observes the general principles of good governance when applying algorithms. The algorithm uses data collected under various tax laws. As required by the AVG, no more data is used than necessary. Coosto is deployed for service provision no control or monitoring activities are carried out with it. The contract with Coosto also stipulates that Coosto may not be used for supervision activities (OSINT applications). Tax authority staff are aware of this.

By means of a DPIA (data protection impact assessment), consideration was given to risks and alternatives with the outcome that they have been mitigated and/or controlled.

• Coosto

Coosto has implemented internal policies and measures to pursue proportionality and data minimisation, among other things. For example, removed public content is no longer made visible to users and Coosto does not archive content. Coosto reviews and aligns their services with applicable laws and regulations, terms and conditions of social media platforms, user privacy settings and reasonable user expectations.

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Legal basis

1. General State Tax Act
2. General Data Protection Regulation
3. 2003 Tax Administration Implementation Decree
4. General Administrative Law Act
5. General Data Protection Regulation (Implementation) Act
6. Income Tax Act 2001
7. Archives Act

Links to legal bases

• General State Tax Act: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0002320/
• General data protection regulation: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/NL/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679
• Tax Administration Implementation Decree 2003: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0014506/
• General Administrative Law Act: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0005537/
• General Data Protection Regulation Implementation Act: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0040940/
• Income Tax Act 2001: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0011353/
• Archives Act: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0007376/

Elaboration on impact assessments

• Privacy and AVG

The use of data should be tested against the General Data Protection Regulation (AVG). Reviewing personal data will highlight any privacy risks and allow appropriate measures to be taken.

The AVG prescribes that no more data should be used than necessary. This is called data minimisation. With Coosto, the Tax and Customs Administration has built in the necessary safeguards that data has the minimum retention periods and all possible safeguards are built in to protect the data, for example by working with authorisations.

As little personal data as possible is processed. Employees involved in developing and managing the algorithms receive training on data protection and bias.

From a service perspective, the Tax and Customs Administration is active on social media channels. In addition, the Tax and Customs Administration offers other channels to enable interaction. For example, the Tax Information Line, so that non-digital-savvy people can also get in touch.

• Use of special personal data

The Tax and Customs Administration's policy and procedure is that Coosto is only used for interactions without personal information. This is stated in the description of each social media channel and on its own website. If it is necessary to use personal information, including special personal data, when responding, citizens and businesses are referred to another communication channel (e.g. the Tax Information Line).

If citizens share special personal data, we process this data, but this happens unintentionally. However, we have taken measures to prevent this, such as clearly indicating prior to the call that no personal data need be shared. We also indicate directly at the automatic reply that people should not share (special) personal data via (private) messages. By doing so, we minimise the chance of unnecessary processing.

If citizens and companies do share personal information, including special personal data, they are asked to delete this information.

Operations

Data

Data subject category | Data used | Source

• Citizens and if applicable companies | Account name and profile image of socialmedia account used by citizen/company | Socialmedia channels Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and X
• Citizens and companies | Social media message content | Social media channels Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and X
• Citizens and companies | Content news articles and forums or blog posts | Various websites (e.g. nu.nl, NOS, Algemeen Dagblad, Taxlive)

Links to data sources

• Account name and profile image of the social media account used by the citizen/company: Socialmediakanalen Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube en X
• Content social media posts: Socialmediakanalen Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube en X
• Content news articles and forums or blog posts: Diverse websites (bijvoorbeeld nu.nl, NOS, Algemeen Dagblad, Taxlive)

Technical design

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In terms of equality and non-discrimination, Coosto follows the following policy:

1. Data structuring: Coosto unlocks content in a structured way, without processing that may affect the content or presentation of the data. Their aim is to ensure that all information is presented in a fair and transparent way, so that everyone has equal access to it.
2. No discriminatory influence: Coosto avoids processing that manipulates the data, thus preventing the risk of bias or discrimination. Information is presented in a neutral and objective manner, without influence from personal characteristics of the author, such as age, ethnicity or other factors.
3. Equal provision: Coosto ensures that all content is accessed and presented equally for every user. This means that no user is disadvantaged, regardless of their personal background, company size or other factors.
4. Inclusive language: Coosto ensures that the language in our interface and support is inclusive and respectful, with particular attention to avoiding sexist, racist or other discriminatory terms.

External provider

The algorithm was developed by Coosto and is not maintained by the Tax Office.