You hardly notice IT in an organization, as long as you can do your work. But when systems grind to a halt, that can have huge consequences. That’s also true for the Netherlands, where increasingly innovation and IT seem to have the lowest priority. This really has to change, argues Onno Eric Blom of Delta Institute. He talks us through three urgent issues.

Delta Institute is an independent think tank committed to achieving a strong digital government and an innovative economy that serves the public interest.

1. Not just a simple software update

“Digital services are at the core of government. When they work properly, this makes it easy for citizens to organize their affairs with the government: report a house move, fill in their tax return or apply for a student grant. Civil servants really want everything to work efficiently, but they’re stuck working with very outdated systems. Over the years new elements have kept being added to them. Even a small change can have huge consequences; a whole system could collapse like a house of cards.”

 “So unfortunately it’s no longer a question of just updating the software: the whole organization needs to get an update and start working differently. The current situation means that, for example, a change to the tax system can’t be implemented because the government’s systems can’t cope with it.”

2. Design around the user

“A possible solution is to keep asking yourself: who are we creating this digital government service for? Design the system around the user, test the service during development and improve the things that don’t work. This is a common approach at innovative start-ups, and it could really benefit the government too.”

 “The government currently makes changes step by step or, to use IT jargon, according to a waterfall model: first parliament takes a decision, then an administrative body starts to implement it and it’s only later that anyone considers what IT is needed. By that time, important choices have often already been made. If you involve IT experts at the initial ideas stage, you avoid coming up with requirements that aren’t technically feasible.”

“You can also build an initial version, or prototype, of an idea and test it with the people who have to work with it, before presenting the proposal to parliament. These days, with AI, you can create and test a prototype like this very quickly. There’s really no good reason not to do it.”

3. Innovation for society

“What if an innovation doesn’t have any immediate appeal for businesses, but it does have the potential to make a positive impact on society? No organization that supports this kind of ‘disruptive innovation’ currently exists in the Netherlands. In America, for example, even at an early stage the government funded research into mRNA, a new technology for the development of medicines and vaccines. This research later played a key role in the development of mRNA vaccines.”

“A potential innovation in the Netherlands would be AI sensors to assist farmers growing crops. Currently, the usual approach is to plant large areas of land with a single crop. That’s efficient, but disastrous for biodiversity. A possible solution would be to plant lots of different crops mixed together. But how would you harvest them efficiently? You could use AI sensors. That way, you would get the same yield and at the same time achieve a big win for biodiversity.”

“An idea like this might be too uncertain for a commercial company to take a chance on, even though it could benefit society a lot. The government could develop and test an initial pilot. The current coalition agreement includes, partly as a result of our efforts, the establishment of the National Agency for Disruptive Innovation (NADI).”

How Delta Institute works

Delta Institute shows how the government can become stronger by introducing in The Hague the same approach taken by technology and science: experimenting, testing and constantly improving. The Institute also contributes critical input on parliament’s plans. “Parliament’s like a football coach who coaches a team he’s never seen play,” Onno reflects. Civil servants aren’t generally allowed to discuss things with parliament, even though parliament takes decisions on IT projects that civil servants have to implement. The Institute’s staff work together with civil servants at the ministries. This means they see what’s going wrong in practice and they’re able to help to find solutions for these problems.