Last week, the members of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (Vereniging van Nederlandse Gemeenten: VNG) agreed to a set of joint Principles for the Digital Society. These principles, set up by a taskforce which the Centre for BOLD Cities joined as a consulting knowledge institution, will serve as shared framework for dealing with questions and challenges in a digitalising public space, both for municipalities and third parties that wish to (or already do) participate in the digitalising Dutch society.
"Our public space is digitalising. We are increasingly using Internet of Things applications and data for, for instance, managing our landscaping and garbage disposal," the VNG states. "Municipalities, knowledge insitutions, urban residents and commercial parties increasingly collect data in order to inform their policies, but also to influence citizens' behaviour."
Since the Principles for the Digital Society form a basic framework, but are expected to need adaptation for the day-to-day practice and political and social context of every municipality, the taskforce that composed the Principles will be continued as a platform to advise the municipalities on the implementation.
The Centre for BOLD Cities, in close collaboration with the Municipality of Rotterdam, is currently working on a series of workshops in which existing municipal use-cases can be analysed along the lines of the Principles for the Digital Society, in order to aid civil servants in their aim to properly implement the Principles in their practice.