Divosa, the Dutch association for municipal social domain management, published an article on our Re-integration in BOLD cities project on its website. Looking into the set-up, methodology and results of the project, Divosa concludes that "linking municipal data sources to national statistics can open up a vast amount of knowledge on properly leading the unemployed back to work. (...) There is one important condition: the process requires very careful preparation and coordination."
In the article, project team members Marike Knoef (Leiden University), Merel Schuring (Erasmus MC), Berivan Yildiz (Erasmus MC) and Maarten van Kooij (Municipality of Rotterdam) talk about the results of the project, as well as the lessons they learned along the way.
"Cooperation between municipalities and researchers are a necessity rather than a luxury," Knoef says. "In order to link data sources, you have to be very well aware of what it is that you are talking about exactly. Big data may be a gold mine, but you cannot simply start digging."
The full article (in Dutch) is available on the Divosa website.