Projects awarded Innovation Budget 2026

Project leads: ICTU, CAK

Overview

Losing a partner is an emotional and stressful experience. During this period, bereaved relatives may receive as many as 70 separate letters from various government organisations, each requesting that they address outstanding matters. These communications are rarely coordinated, resulting in fragmented information that creates unnecessary uncertainty and distress at a time when people are least able to cope.

This project replaces multiple disconnected letters with a single proactive, personalised overview on behalf of the entire Dutch government, providing bereaved relatives with a clear picture of what needs to be done.

Project leads: Municipality of Súdwest-Fryslân, Municipality of Leeuwarden, Municipality of Tytsjerksteradiel

Overview

The D-OmniTwin project creates a federated interaction layer that provides municipalities and residents with an integrated view of neighbourhood conditions. Whether the issue is heat stress, energy poverty or access to local services, D-OmniTwin brings together fragmented datasets via an interactive digital compass.

The platform builds on the Fryslân Data Space and connects to the national Federated Data System. Data remains at its source while becoming easier to discover and use for policymaking and public dialogue. Its data-space-agnostic architecture and AI use create an open-source, scalable solution for data-driven spatial planning across the Netherlands.

Project leads: Geonovum, Kadaster (Land Registry and Mapping Agency), Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK)

Overview

This project aims to improve the implementation and adoption of government standards by:

• Making standards suitable for AI-based consumption and embeddable in AI-assisted software development.
• Introducing a system that automatically updates software when standards change.

The project will develop an AI Readiness Assessment Framework, create AI tools for several pilot standards, evaluate how effectively AI models apply these standards, and build the CompliancePush system to support the automated implementation of changes.

Project leads: Municipalities of Heusden, Altena, Apeldoorn, Bergen op Zoom, De Fryske Marren, Hof van Twente, Lingewaard, Maashorst, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Veendam, Drimmelen, Goes, Gooise Meren, Nissewaard, Raalte, Waadhoeke, Hardinxveld-Giessendam, Meerssen, Midden-Delfland and Wageningen, together with the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) and 1Stroom (Duiven & Westervoort)

Overview

For many residents, accessing municipal services feels like navigating a maze. They are often unsure which services are available or struggle to find the information they need. At the same time, municipalities are independently redesigning their websites and customer service centres, all grappling with the same question: how can services be organised so that people can easily find what they are looking for?

What is currently missing is a proven standard for organising and naming municipal services. Through co-creation and user research, VNG and 21 municipalities are developing the clearest, most intuitive structure for websites, customer service centres, and a hybrid service desk, where AI and video consultations support staff more effectively.

The result will be a nationally recognised service entry model that can be adopted by all 342 Dutch municipalities across all customer contact channels.

Project leads: Het Waterschapshuis, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), Rijkswaterstaat (RWS), STOWA and NEVSAT

Overview

Government organisations need to monitor changes in the living environment every day. Are waterways becoming overgrown? Has a land parcel changed? Has an obstacle appeared along a waterway? Much of this work is still carried out manually, often after changes have already occurred.

TITAAN (Topographic Intelligent Terrain Analysis Algorithm Netherlands) is developing the country’s first public GeoAI Foundation Model: an open AI model trained on Dutch aerial imagery, elevation data and satellite images that can automatically detect changes in the landscape.

The benefits are wide-ranging. Citizens benefit from fewer inspections and earlier government intervention, preventing problems from escalating. Farmers receive faster decisions on subsidy applications. Businesses gain more predictable infrastructure and land management. Smaller municipalities and nature organisations, such as Natuurmonumenten, can also benefit without having to develop their own GeoAI models.

Project leads: Municipality of Amsterdam, Municipality of Almere, NDW, the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG), Cliëntenbelang and the VIP Group.

Overview

Getting around the city independently is not equally straightforward for everyone. For wheelchair users, a single obstacle can make a destination inaccessible.

Freewheelen addresses this by providing a route planner that tailors routes to individual user preferences while transforming raw mapping data into practical accessibility information.

Working with Cliëntenbelang and partners from the European Horizon programme, the project has already developed and tested a minimum viable product (MVP). The next step is to scale up by making the algorithms open source and standardising accessibility data in collaboration with road authorities. This will allow municipalities and developers to build on a shared foundation, making accessible urban mobility the norm rather than the exception.

The next step is to scale the solution by making the algorithms open-source and standardising accessibility data in collaboration with road authorities. This will enable municipalities and developers to build on a shared foundation, making accessible urban mobility a standard feature of cities rather than an exception.

Project leads: Dutch Tax Administration and Employee Insurance Agency (UWV)

Overview

Understanding rights and obligations can be complex for citizens. The Personal Assistant (PA) is an interactive solution that proactively delivers clear, personalised guidance tailored to people’s circumstances. It shifts the complexity to where it belongs: the government, not the citizen.

The project uses retirement as its first use case. After retiring, people often receive income from multiple sources, making it difficult to apply tax and benefit rules accurately. As a result, some only discover later that they owe additional tax or must repay.

The Personal Assistant brings together earlier innovations, including a digital wallet, certified calculation rules and an AI agent, into a single, easy-to-use app that runs locally on a user’s smartphone. It gives people greater certainty in advance and, where appropriate, helps them understand the actions they need to take.

Project leads: Dimpact, Municipality of Emmen, Municipality of Enschede, Municipality of Groningen, Municipality of Rotterdam, Municipality of Zwolle

Overview

Dutch municipalities are transitioning to the Common Ground information architecture, in which data is stored in open, standardised registers rather than locked away in legacy systems. However, migrating that data remains time-consuming and error-prone, largely because mappings between data models must be created manually.

This project will develop an open-source Mapping Assistant as an extension of the Data Migration Tool (DMT). Using AI, the tool will validate mappings and provide well-founded suggestions, while keeping the information manager fully in control of all final decisions.

The result will enable municipalities to migrate data more quickly and accurately, with less dependence on proprietary suppliers.

Project leads: Netherlands Chamber of Commerce (KVK), Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), DICTU

Overview

Businesses are often required to submit large volumes of paperwork when applying for permits, grants or inspections. This is time-consuming, increases the risk of errors and slows administrative processes.

The Business Wallet addresses this by securely retrieving supporting documents directly from a business’s digital data vault and automatically sharing them with public organisations such as RVO, NVWA and municipalities. Each document is accompanied by verifiable proof of authenticity from the issuing organisation, for example, the Chamber of Commerce (KVK).This means businesses no longer need to collect and upload documents, while government organisations can process applications more efficiently and with greater confidence in the authenticity of the information they receive.

As part of this project, NVWA, RVO, KVK and DICTU are developing the functional concept to support this new way of working, enabling more efficient business processes across participating organisations.

Project leads: Municipality of Amsterdam, Municipality of Utrecht, Municipality of Zwolle, Association for Legal Quality Management

Overview

The Learning from Objections project turns formal objections into a valuable source of insight to improve government decision-making and public services.The project is developing a reusable, open-source analytics tool that automatically anonymises objection texts, categorises them by subject and identifies recurring patterns across a wide range of municipal processes, including permits, enforcement and grants.

Using business analytics, municipalities can focus on the improvements with the greatest impact. AI-supported trend analysis using large language models (LLMs) provides detailed insight into where decisions can be improved. These findings feed into structured learning cycles with partner organisations, making improvements measurable and helping to reduce avoidable objections by delivering better public services.

Project leads: Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK), Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS), Logius, Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG), Kadaster, Rijkswaterstaat, developer.overheid.nl

Overview

Many Dutch government organisations store their source code on GitHub, Microsoft’s commercial software development platform, which is hosted outside the European Union. This creates a dependency on a foreign technology provider for a key part of the government’s software development process, often via individually managed user accounts.

This project explores whether a viable alternative exists. It will assess the use of Forgejo, an open-source platform, as a shared code repository for government organisations operating on sovereign government infrastructure.

A pilot environment with real users will be developed and tested, and the platform’s potential to scale into a government-wide component of the Dutch Digital Government Infrastructure (GDI) will be examined. The pilot will begin with a small group of participants and gradually expand. All findings will be published openly.

Project leads: Kadaster, Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK)

Overview

Many government organisations are working to strengthen the Netherlands’ national geospatial data infrastructure. Data custodians responsible for key registers such as BAG, BGT and BRT, including municipalities, Rijkswaterstaat, provincial authorities, regional water authorities and Kadaster, continuously update information on the physical environment. This remains a labour-intensive process that relies heavily on manual work.

At the same time, the availability of aerial imagery, satellite data and elevation models has increased significantly, and GeoAI techniques such as image analysis and change detection have matured.

This project explores how these technologies can be integrated into the maintenance of the national base registries, enabling detection of changes in the physical environment at the national level and reuse across multiple government organisations, reducing duplication and improving efficiency.

Project leads: Municipality of Rotterdam, Dimpact

Overview

The municipalities of Rotterdam, The Hague, Nijmegen and Eindhoven use the Open Source Output Management Component (OMC) to send messages to residents and businesses, including notifications that an action is required or that a permit has been granted.

The logic behind these communications is defined by patterns: reusable rules that determine what happens in specific situations, such as automatically sending a message when an application is submitted or a decision is made. At present, these patterns are embedded within the OMC itself, making them difficult and time-consuming to adapt.

This project will create an open, shared pattern library, making it easier to develop, share and reuse communication patterns. This will enable municipalities to communicate more quickly, consistently and proactively, and provide residents with clearer, more timely information.

Project leads: Interprovinciaal Overleg (IPO), Geonovum, BIJ12

Overview

Government organisations face increasingly complex spatial planning challenges and need a shared understanding of key concepts to exchange and reuse data effectively. In practice, developing and maintaining terminology frameworks is time-consuming and requires scarce specialist expertise.

At the same time, the Dutch NL-SBB standard provides a rich and comprehensive semantic framework, but it is not always easy to apply in practice. This can lead to inconsistent definitions, delays and higher management costs for government organisations and their partners.

By using AI, terminology frameworks can be developed more quickly, more consistently and to a higher standard. The project will also enable users to ask questions about the NL-SBB standard in plain language, making it easier to use and improving efficiency and collaboration across government.

Project leads: National Office for the Caribbean Netherlands (RCN), Municipality of The Hague, Public Entity Bonaire

Overview

The National Office for the Caribbean Netherlands (RCN), together with the Municipality of The Hague and the Public Entity Bonaire, is developing an open-standard interface to connect the KISS customer contact system to the MiTel telephony platform.

The project aims to strengthen collaboration between the Caribbean Netherlands and the European Netherlands, enabling residents of the BES islands to access the same level of digital telephone-based public services as those in the European part of the country.

By integrating the customer contact registration system with the telephone platform, customer service staff will be able to answer calls directly in KISS. The project also introduces secure multilingual speech transcription in Dutch, English, Spanish and Papiamentu, reducing the need for residents to repeat their story when contacting government organisations.