SILA - 25 years between State and Church
The Stichting Interkerkelijke Leden Administratie (SILA) in the Netherlands recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. In honor of this memorable event, the former director, Mr. F.H.M. (Frits) van Spaendonck, wrote a book about the SILA titled “Between State and Church.” At a formal seminar in Utrecht, Church leaders, SILA board members and other dignitaries gathered as the book was officially presented to the Dutch minister of Home Affairs, Her Excellency Mr. Drs. L.W.E. (Liesbeth) Spies.
In 2004 the SILA approached Data Access Europe with the request to build a software solution that could couple the databases of churches at one end with municipalities at the other. A new system developed with Visual DataFlex was put in place in 2006 to replace an old mainframe solution. The software was built in one year, the project was on-time and on-budget and it offered the SILA significant cost savings and a stable, flexible solution.
Currently the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, the Liberal Catholic Church, the Old Catholic Church, the General Baptist Society, the New Apostolic Church and the Salvation Army are members of the SILA. Every year, SILA and the Churches use the Visual DataFlex software to process 1.2 million database updates.
Data Access Europe has sincerely enjoyed working with the SILA over the years and hopes to do so, for many years to come. We congratulate the SILA on their 25th anniversary!
