The iSPEX is a small attachment that can be fitted to any mobile phone to measure particulate matter in the air. The fact that this piece of technology empowers anyone to monitor air quality (citizen science) creates a raft of new possibilities to collect large volumes of data in a highly efficient and cost-effective manner. Aside from that, it raises awareness of particulate matter among the population.
Country: Netherlands
Organisational development in a municipality within a framework set by the municipal council is not new. However, a local authority can still be innovative in how it designs such development and the role employees play in it. In Nijkerk (approx. 43,000 inhabitants), this has led to an organisation made up of 28 self-managing teams that come directly under the authority of the municipal clerk. Nijkerk went through a process where employees and the development of their talent came first.
The 3D map of the Netherlands has been available from the Dutch Land Registry Office since 2014 on an open data basis. This map is intended as a basic file that institutions from across the public and private sector can use for their purposes, such as to link data to and run analyses. It can, for example, be used to assess and calculate how wind turbines affect the local environment in terms of noise, flows of air, and the shadows they cast, but also to assess their visual impact in the…
The municipality of Zeist (approx. 64,000 inhabitants) faced the challenge of having to cut its spending by 6.2 million euros. A decision was made to take the innovative approach of engaging with citizens in a social discussion on possible spending cuts. Through this process of co-creation with its residents, the Zeist local authority not only managed to balance the budget, but it has also helped the local authority forge closer ties with the community and garner broader support for cutbacks.
Where organisations in the criminal law domain used to originally operate in a chain, things changed when a different approach to dealing with common crimes was adopted. The police, the Public Prosecutor's Office, victim support, and the probation service are all based at one single location, enabling them to handle complete cases within a time span of only nine hours. With this new working method, cases are kept simple, settled quickly, handled together, and treated as selectively as possible.
Case Study
The Energy and Resources Factory – a collaborative venture by the joint Dutch water boards
The Energy and Resources Factory is a collaborative venture by the Netherlands’ 21 water boards. It is an organization that is focused on turning wastewater into a source of renewable energy and resources.
The South Holland provincial authority is looking for ways to make the energy transition towards carbon neutrality a standard consideration in all its infrastructure management and maintenance activities. The province wants innovation to be a structural part of these activities, which has already produced the ‘N211 generates energy’ and ‘N470 generates energy’ projects.
The former municipality of Molenwaard was the Netherlands’ first local council to operate without a town hall. This innovation came about when three local authorities merged together into one municipality. Despite becoming a much larger municipality they still wanted to stay close to the community. They decided to no longer have a service desk in the traditional sense of the concept. Instead, the local authority goes out into the community and is, therefore, always nearby.
How do we create a safer river delta while at the same time ensuring an attractive living environment? This is the question that the Dutch Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat) sought to answer through its Room for the River program. With this program, the emphasis was shifted from reinforcing dikes to creating more space for the river, with an unprecedented focus on the spatial quality of the whole river delta.
Since 1 January 2013, the regional social services unit for the Drechtsteden area in the Netherlands’ South Holland province has been procuring domestic support based on performance agreements with care providers. By putting performance first, instead of the number of hours of support provided, care providers are incentivized to work more efficiently. The new method comes with benefits for users, for the Drechtsteden region, and for care providers.