The Netherlands' Digitalisation Strategy

Joint acceleration is the only option

The Netherlands faces major societal challenges in a rapidly changing environment, and digitalisation is key to the solutions. As such, investment in our digital foundation is vital for the Netherlands and the major challenges our society faces. The government is one of the largest consumers of digital services, making it a driver of digital developments essential for a resilient society and a prosperous, productive and forward-looking economy.

As a government, we have been discussing the same goals for around 25 years, such as focusing our services on citizens and entrepreneurs, optimising accessibility and improving our data exchange. Progress in these areas has been insufficient so far, as they have largely been tackled by government organisations individually. In the past, we mainly looked at what needed to be done, instead of how to do it collectively. Digitalisation is now a hot topic politically, and the need for change has been stated repeatedly. In recent years, key national and international organisations have produced numerous recommendations and reports on digital developments [1] , including specifically about digitalisation in government [2].

All of these reports share a commonality: the future is digital, and the development of digitalisation cannot happen without targeted central coordination. The government is currently struggling with problematic legacy systems, services that are insufficiently aligned with the needs of citizens and entrepreneurs, fragmented policies, and the need to strengthen digital security and resilience.

As such, the cabinet emphasises the need for a different approach. To achieve breakthroughs, we must get to work now: seeking collaboration, simplifying where possible, and accelerating development. We will collaborate at all levels of government to determine how it can be done. Instead of drafting new policy for each level of government, we must focus on collective acceleration with government authorities and the market, while maintaining an ongoing dialogue with society and parliament. After all, the average citizen sees one government, not the decentralised state as envisaged by J.R. Thorbecke with the central government, provinces, water boards and municipalities as separate levels of government. In this day and age, we can no longer afford to operate as individual organisations. We live in a single, digital house of Thorbecke, in which all government organisations are united.

With the Netherlands’ Digitalisation Strategy, we—the central government, provinces, municipalities, water boards and public service providers—will prioritise the topics with the greatest urgency and impact. We want to accelerate development by enabling breakthroughs and removing obstacles through political and administrative management. The key to success lies in good coordination and cooperation among all government organisations.

While pursuing these ambitions, we must not lose sight of the importance of public values—including legal certainty—in digitalisation policy. This ranges from data protection safeguards to the continued provision of support to citizens, entrepreneurs and public servants who struggle to keep up with digital developments [3].

The need for one government in the digital world

Individual organisations each have their own cloud strategies, cybersecurity approaches, incompatible legacy systems, separated data silos and their own versions of a comparable AI system. This fragmentation stands in the way of strengthening our resilience, improving services, accelerating development and ensuring quality. The rate of technological change, labour market shortages and geopolitical developments all require us to join forces. The EU Digital Decade goals [4], such as those concerning the digitalisation of public services, high-quality digital professionals and digital resilience and autonomy, further add to the urgency.

Starting today, we are taking a different approach, choosing a limited number of priorities to tackle collectively, subject to collectively agreed targets and with mutual accountability. This approach still leaves room for individual organisations to make their own choices on topics [5].

The Netherlands’ Digitalisation Strategy operates on the principle of ‘centralised agreement, federated design’. Based on mutual agreements, government organisations will implement standards and develop joint solutions and building blocks in their own organisations. They will do so at their own pace, working towards the agreed-upon target, and we commit to holding each other to those targets. With this approach, government authorities will cooperate as partners in the digital house of Thorbecke, eliminating compartmentalisation.

We will reinforce and future-proof our digital foundation. This requires investment in digital government. Digital technologies involving cloud, data and AI are key here. By investing in these technologies, we can further modernise services for people in the Netherlands and increase our resilience. This necessitates further development of public servants’ digital skills and a modern workspace to help them do their jobs better.