Government to Business #8: Laurens den Ouden & Wouter Nieuwenhuis from the Netherlands
Welcome. To government to business the, go-to location for, executives, delivering, digital, services, to business and, now, here's, your host gavin, atkinson. Get. A focus and welcome to another episode of government, to business my, name's Gavin Atkinson, and today I have a really interesting interview. With two gentlemen who, helped look after the Dutch, portal. For, business. So, that's business gov, dot NL which is an english-language portal. And the, Dutch equivalent. Which is a little bit more mature called undernourished. Line dot NL and their names are Walter, no vanHoose and Lauren's den olden so both. Water and Lauren's have a lot of experience, with what they're doing currently within the Dutch government we. Really. Go into a lot of interesting, interesting areas we discuss how we're building momentum with the founding fathers, behind the projects you know the actual champion, agencies. Was. Able to kind of build examples, of success and then help overcome, internal, obstacles, within. Government, we. Also look at how other EU governments, can actually learn from the Dutch experience. Particularly. Around segmenting. The business audience from both an inside and outside the country perspective, and. What that correspondingly. Delivers, and how that varies between the two and. We also look at uh suppose the importance, of having a regular high speed agile, improvement, and development to, your government portal it's a it's a really intriguing interview, and I hope you get as much out of it as I did in. The meantime sit back relax and, enjoy our, inventor. View with water and Lawrence, on the, Dutch, experience, with delivering government, with and services, in, the, Netherlands. Welcome. Water, and Lawrence to the government, to business podcast thank you so much for joining me today I came across the business gal, gadot NL and it's, Dutch language counterpart. On-demand, lane but until recently when. I was reviewing how, governments, in the EU were actually approaching, the the.
Changes, That were a comer occurring. To privacy, regulations, with GD P R and I. Found at the time I was, really. Impressed with a few things one the fact that you were actually very, prominently, in significantly, putting. This major regulatory, change, impacting, on business, smack-bang. There on the home page it was very very obvious and then we actually went into that information, it. Was presented in a highly, customer, focused way it wasn't in the usual, government, jargon, it. Was actually quite consumable. Information. And very practical information. So. Great. Job there I did. A little bit digging further and found that the more I looked at this particular site, the more it really, resonated. I guess. With that whole view of having, a single. A single, one-stop. Shop for one answer from government I think is the translation, within the English, version site can you tell me a little bit around the, Netherlands, government's, approach, toward, creating, this one-stop shop of business. Well. First. Of all thanks for having us there Gavin and. The. Approach, I think, it. Was realized, and we're talking about about. Six years ago from now when this project started. A. Very. Fragmented, landscape, was there for entrepreneurs, where to, get information to get things done they had to visit multiple sites, contact, multiple, agencies, and spend, a lot of unnecessary, time, actually that way, so. The. Goal, was. To create a much less bothersome. Government. For entrepreneurs, so they could, actually spend more time on what they should be doing or running their business. In. Order to get. To that a law was signed and. The. The Chamber of Commerce in, the Netherlands was given an, assignment. As part of the law on the chamber of commerce to, provide. What we call a digital digital. On, the neighbor's flame a, digital, entrepreneurs, square difficult, to translate, but one place where entrepreneurs information. Actually comes, together and, you. Have to put a focus on, one. Answer, for entrepreneurs, and that's. That's what we started creating from, that point on. So. What, was the actual impetus, what started, that whole process well this is a strategic derive. The drama behind that decision. Well. I mean what at the Dutch government side yes we're actually going to bring all this stuff together. Well. This. Was I have to admit before my time here with the project, I know, the minister, Hank, pump Minister. Of Economic, Affairs at the time was. Responsible, and, was. Very, entrepreneur. Oriented, in his in his approach. And, and. I made. The. Directive, the law to to, start that. The. Actual, strategic. Reasoning, behind that the. Start documents, would, have to be a question for. The. Ministry, itself as we are actually, given the. Assignment. And we are in the executive, role here where we we put it into into, work. But. For. Us it's quite simple, to actually. Defragment. This bring different organizations. Together. If. They have overlap, to, make sure that there. Is no information. The. Same on. Competing. Websites, different. Styles, for the same story. It's. A challenge but. The. Main focus the the reasoning, behind it was let's. Stop, entrepreneurs. Wasting. Their time on, opening. 10 different tabs in their web browser to, try and find what information, they need and just bring, it together in as little information, and.
As Clear, information, as possible. So, in, doing, that was that something that from. A cultural, perspective. Was. There is it was a something top-down, coming, from yeah the ministerial-level, saying. Look this, is what we want to try to achieve and. And these, government, agencies will, be involved. And or. Was it more. A. Combination. Of that and a little bit of bottom up with that whole premise, around, the customer, experience, and how can we make it easier across government. Yeah. I, would, say, Laurens, here I would, say as a particular, from the English website I, would, say business at office now is, has. Got the same assignments. More, or less the same sign that's a Dutch website. And. But. Also. The. Dutch, model is a. Lot, of bottom. Up so. Just. Look. Where are the. Look. From the point of view of the entrepreneur, and from. Their own. Start. I make. Things, that that, work and, then gets, get. All the agencies together. To, to join us so. It's, I, would. Say it's it's the. The the cultural. Change is not, only think from your own agency. I think. From the yeah. The the, bigger, picture, from the for the entrepreneur, yes. The. Continued, struggle, is. Challenged. And. Yeah. We're. Getting we on the right G. It's. Constant. Yeah. Make. Good. Combinations. And also. Be proactive, as a organization. As, a website. And. And. Try. To. Give. The bigger picture, also, to the other agencies. So. If. I took a lot there around the nature, of the entrepreneur, and trying to meet their needs, what. Were the but I suppose what were the activities, what was the approach. And you. May not have been there at the time, but. You, probably know the backstory, around. Look how, did you identify those problems what, were the main issues, to. Be able to bring this all together. Well. The, the Dutch project, has. Run a lot longer than the business. Dot gough that an L initiative, that we have had since the end of august so, from. There we have continued, the experience, we gathered, on the Dutch portal, Oh in. Boggle I talk, more around the Dutch experience, it that's a deeper, and. It's. The same the same team so for us it's more like a new, sibling a new. Sister. Project, within the same development, team within the same, core team so it's. Not the proposition, is pretty much the same what, did the target audience has some. Differences. As. In the English language group, insurance. A, slightly different audience but our, approach is very similar, and well. To, focus, on the, end customer the entrepreneur, I think. Because. We've done it for so many years it's grown, pretty natural, to us that. Sometimes we forget that this is the aspect, within the government that gives us quite a unique edge. So. Government. Organisations. Our partners, and stakeholders. Especially. In the earlier days really had to transform, to get to that user centric, approach and. Have. More, trouble perhaps breaking, free from different, governments directive. And for. Us we we, were mostly a hub, of different content delivered. By. Senders. Outside, so. We, could focus on combining that optimising, that distribute. Distributing. That in a optimal. Way and and with. Doing so we, could see how do we do that testing our designs. Experimenting. With different content, types different, combinations. Doing. A, survey. Is doing testing, on users, beginning. Very much to get to know the, audience, in this. Way and for. English we continue. With. That for example what Lawrence is doing right now and. And also important to have a very open. Open. Approach to, the to the stakeholders. And to. Focus. On on strengthen. Each other instead, of, yeah. Into the. Yeah. Fighting, each other if. You know what I mean, so. That's and I think that's a very, important. Cultural, change. That is still, happening and still. Growing and we. We, want to be connected also in the European, system with, the other point of single contacts, to. To, show, the people, and agencies, that this. Could, could. Be a. Big. Step forward in lowering, the the, boundaries. Also. For for, entrepreneurs, it. Want to, go. To another. Member. States. So. One. Thing of you know I've had an experience across a number of different governments now where they've they're really dealt with that challenge. Initially. It's very very hard to kind of bring agencies. On board around. This concept around, this envision, but I think. What you both said was, a hundred, percent where, once, you start building, momentum with. A number, of champion. Agencies, if I can put it that way those who actually believe, and understand what you're going through and, what you're trying to achieve and you start putting a product out there with resonates.
And Works for the business. Customer, audience, it's. Often then easier, to build on that like a snowball. That gets bigger and bigger as more people kind of go oh yeah I know what it means now I can see how my. Business. Or entrepreneurs. Relate. To that, audience and how I can bring it all together. Has. That been your experience it, sounds like it is a little bit but I'm interested to see if there's been any differences. At all along the way because there is I noticed between. The the Dutch version and, the English version, there's, probably a few more agencies. Currently participating. In that Dutch version rather than the English version of the site and I'm not sure if that's because of the, nature of the audience is different so they. Tell. Me a little bit more about that well. We've. Started off the english the. Dutch project, with a. Set. Of founding. Fathers as i call them, committed. To the project and. Some. Decisions were made on their. Contribution. To the project, which meant delivering. People. To. A common, newsroom, or editorial, board where, the, content was managed and created. It's. The. Way you could it makes, it sound like yeah let's, let's do this snowball. That's let's grow from the winning examples. Then but, I have, to be honest we face a reality where, different organizations. Still have different directives, they, they. Are positioned. Under different departments, within the government, different ministries, different, bosses. We, as executive. Makers. Developers. Communications. People account, managers, are our board of a very, efficient, I might say. Our. Team, works very well but we are also, somewhere. Low in the, hierarchy. So we are very facility, we work, so, I would hope our, our. Our. Role. Would grow to be in be that that's that's not doable experience. Where we would use these examples that work and there are plenty of those don't. Get me wrong but. We will continue. To. Fight. Against, some. Some. Forces, from. Our perspective, let's say yes but some things are more important, than this some, things are more important that that some things are more hot than the political agenda and we, just have to work around that first as an organization, before we deal with you guys again for your great snowball projects. That's. That's how it's been going and, we've, been managing to do that and we we. The, portal, it's. It's. Not become, this. One-stop. Shop where there are plenty of shops so it's actually.
The. Dutch portal, has grown from. Being a. One, place where, you would go for the information, to also where we are providing, this information to. The growing number of stakeholders. Our. Original. Partners, there are websites where, we would plug in the information through, an API. Towards. Specific. Business, sectors regional, governments, where we, bring the information to where the entrepreneur actually. Is so this was. A. Change, in in, our approach to bring the information to the user though. For English we. Do have that's, assignment. To to to grow and expand, as as Lawrence, can tell you about yeah. And. From. The. There. Is a steering group I want to add that. Is like. It's. Not only button map so, there is a steering, group with, all the agencies, involved. And. And. In that steering group there are decisions made about the. Strategy. And, the. Commitment. Also from, the different. Stakeholders. And agencies, so. Yeah. There. Is some there. Is a. Formal. Structure, as well it's. Not only the aged edgy our approach, and, snowball. I guess. The the challenge, and. Again, not being able to speak Dutch it's a little bit hard to see and understand, what's going in the Dutch version of the site but has. The approach to date then purely. Information. Based or have, you got more into that transactional. Element, as well full service. Delivery for business. Well. Our our proposition. Is the information. Part that's that's our assignment, we. Work closely together, with those departments. That are developing, that aspect, but that is as you can understand a complex one because many, of these. Are. Spread. All over the, government different, government levels different organisations, we. Do connect to these transactional. Elements. And try to optimize, for. Example. The amount of steps you have to take to get to where you need to be as an entrepreneur, so we provide, a lot of. Entrances. Or exits or, whatever you would like to call them to get within a few steps to where you need to be the.
Management, Of the actual transaction, is not. What. We do we don't have the one storage, of them all and the. One government, stack. Of transactions. In one, place but. With. The European. Directive on the single a digital, gateway coming along, although the Member States will will have to get that connected. Together, and, so. Will be will. Be focusing, on getting, that. To work even, better than it does now we, do connect it we. Have an index. Of the regional, governments, transactions. Connected, to our information. Base where you can see okay my my, city is this. One I'm based here what. Do I have to do to for, example. Provide. My cafe, with a terrorist permit, so have people sit, outside when, the weather is nice here in the Midlands and. That. Way. Plenty. Of time to prepare for that in winter, when. The month of May, and June arrives and, sit outside for a few days this year. Now, summers getting better but, the. City's approach to handling, these permits, they they change so we try to bring the entrepreneur, to that location quickly, they put in where are they based what do they need to take care of but, we still depend a lot on the, information, offered to us by these local governments and mind, you there is a 385. Of them so. Connecting. This is a challenge. That's. A lot of governments for a very small physical. Geographic. Footprint. It, is yes but. It. Is possible but yeah, you can see where our training is go yes, I think yeah I think you how do you think correct and well. I was gonna ask a little bit of that what the experience, is from a customer, perspective but, also and what you've been doing with. Building. Relationships, beyond, to say the national, government, layer in the Netherlands, with other partners. In other levels. Or jurisdictions. Within the Netherlands. Well, this. Is a bit different from the Dutch, in the English website. Lawrence. Is growing, very much looking for all kinds of initiatives, related. To those, businesses, that want to actually, base themselves in the Netherlands start up in the Netherlands there, are many of collectives, many new. Startup. Expert, organizations. It's, a bit of a different audience than the, Dutch audience. But. Yeah we do connect those two, where possible. Yeah. We will. For. The, Dutch field, I think it the focus for the next year's will be to combine better, what we already have, bring. Some sort of. Optimized. Structure. In there see, if we can, get. The quality of the information higher. Introduced. Things. Like, a. Better. Taxonomy. Semantic. Databases, putting. The different informations, together and we do have a lot of experience. In connecting, difference. Ingesting. Different data streams. Those that just deliver us information, as, is which we combine in packages. Another. Part we create, ourselves with, the common editorial.
Newsroom. So. It's it's a mixture of a lot of information that we have on the crossroads, which we would call the content hub that we are, and. Yeah. We're we're we're looking at improving that we've seen for example in our European, contacts, lots of inspirational. Examples. In. In in Finland, for example, I. Would say I talk to our colleagues, in Finland they have, built. Great. Structures. In how to connect, information, and in. Have. Their programmers, build, databases. Smart. Databases some AI learning. Capacities, things like this is what, we are working on and I think in the next few years is, definitely, the, type of tools, we. Will be using, to. Combine, even more information and get better results, on different platforms out, to the entrepreneur. A. Little. Bit more. One probably relates more to you and the other one is probably a little bit more the lorentz so. I'll. Ask both questions there, whilst they're in my mind and I don't forget the. First one was around that that you talked about Finland, and yourselves, and that concept within the EU of, the, the, single, digital gateway. Interested. There about, where you see yourselves. Compared. To other, member. States and where other member states can potentially learn from your cells or other, governments, within the, EU, that's, probably my question to you water and whilst I also don't. Forget more. Probably for a Lawrence point of view is you. Know when it comes to the different audiences that. Exists between the Dutch version and. The English version. How. Does it actually drive, the, user experience, and what you present to the, customer I mean how are things a little bit different, in that proposition. Between the two so happy, for you devised to work out with you which question first. Beginning. With your first question. Some. Time to. Figure. Out the answer for the second. No. In the European, context, which. Lawrence. And I pretty. Much do together, is. I. Can, see there's a very open, attitudes. A very positive vibe, within our, European. Partners where. There's. Not. So much competition you, would think the European. Directive every, country would want its own business to grow. Would. There be any, tension that was one of the questions I had first encountering. These groups but I think, that's. Not something to be afraid of every country has its own geographical. Position, its own type. Of government, its own a target, audience I don't think there is a.
Lot, Of direct. Competition going, on there as well as there are chances. Now for. Cooperating. And seeing, some, of the challenges, we face together at this time. There. Is a lot of exchange, of, information. How. Did you solve this how did you solve that and like I said the. Country specifics, are very, diverse within. 27. Different states, you can dimension well we have, 385, local governments, but this, is different, for every one of those 27. For me to study what they all are about is something complex to begin with so to, scale that down to smaller examples. How do you work with navigation, how do you work with a gathering, user feedback. How do you work with your. Systematics. Behind, the the. Code base of the project, the, product, that you are developing how, do you tackle these things all these little elements, you. Find each other on specific. Levels and one, is further in this field the other is further in that field and the. Open context, of this European cooperation, really. Allows. A chance, very low, level, low threshold to, say oh great, we can perhaps. Work together on this field with, competing, with each other so much so this I found this very positive, very inspiring. I've seen. Locally. In more difficult conversations. About working together with in the middle. But. That's not dicey I'm not surprised. From. My experience. With within the EU, and the times that I've been to Europe and being, the UK and so forth I think, 100%, correct of me amongst the Member States it actually seems to be a lot more, wanting. To work together and learn from each other and, it's, meowt's fragile enough that that's sub regional, level but things get a little bit more political so, anyway. Some. Great insights the lorentz. Have it have it's yourself for that other question I had about the differences, between the, English and the Dutch site and and the reasons for that and, you, know have a variety. I guess from the different, the. Different audience between the two. Yeah. Of course there is a difference in the target group so. I. Would. Say that some. Of the content we made for the Dutch website is also interesting, for the for the English website we. Try to do, it as efficient, as possible so. If. Actually. Native English, editors to translate, some of the content, to Dutch website, but. But. I would say we, we, have a feedback, tool and we have a user centric approach for, both websites and, that. Makes it possible to, to. To. Get an insight in the need, of the entrepreneur, so as, well the native. Entrepreneur, as the for an entrepreneur, and. For. Example also make, content, together with a nurse such. As to webinar we made I, think, three, months ago and also, have like for, an entrepreneur, in, the studio. And. In. Order that warden. Can, identify them, with with, with, the answer. We. Give. In that time of type of content, so. We. Also do. Research. About, seek. Wishes, of. Of the target group. Since. We are based in the Rotterdam, Jacob, of Commerce. We. Can actually, go. To. The floor where. For, our subscribing. Themselves, and. We. Can, ask. That it, is a sign when international. Foreign. Entrepreneur. So. Today we actually, have some some, field. Research and ask them questions what. Questions. Do you have and. We thank. You very answer, on the basis of golf dot and how so. There are ways to. Get. Inside, in what, are the different needs of the, of. The target groups so. And. There. Are some difference of course in in, in. The approach. And. Also. The vertex. Webs we have a full. Partner. Editorial, boards. For. The English website we have a small version of that because we don't need to do we can make, use of some, of the aspects. Of the Dutch website, and, also. Regarding, the code base of the website we can. Reuse. That sometimes. Yeah. I. Would. Say that's the biggest. Difference. The. Host nation. Of. The website it's a. Little. Bit different because we're still young we want, to have, scale. Of it, in. The next years. It's. Interesting you talked about not only the differences, but also the similarities, that exist between the two which is you. Know really encouraging. And one of the things you talked around there was around the say that, content boards, and so forth and I think Walter also talked a little bit some other aspects. Of governance, that are more senior, little does. That good governance around. How things work. Transcend. Does it cut across both. Of the sites so that they've seen is more an overall, program of work rather, than, separate, strings or how does that all come together. The. The projects, exist within, the same government, directive.
That Gives. Us. Her. Assignments. And the, funding that goes with it that, this, includes the both the portals we can separate, the PSC. Dutch. And the PSC English with slightly, different propositions. But. It's. It's it's part of the same law, that allows. Us to do this to, put it like that so it, it, transcends, like that it's logical, for us to be working on those two things at, the same time which, have enough similarities. To work efficiently in. Improving. That but when it comes to things, like stakeholder, management the. Ambition, in growing, on, English, versus. Mostly, managing, and maintaining. For. The Netherlands or at, least that's where the time goes because, we are somewhat, older and the positioning, is different we, do grow still but it's not, a start-up phase English, is much more a start-up mentality new. Connections. New discoveries, and, we're. A little bit more senior, on the Dutch, PSC, but, it helps, us and it keeps us young to have our English. Language. Sister, very close to us it brings some. Dynamics, also included, team, the. Same, development, team sees new, challenges, and some. Of the things we develop for English, will. Provide, us with information, that, is very useful for our more. Classic, Dutch, website, and we we. Surely hope, to bring in that energy to, work for both our portals. While. English and why not another language I. Think. Mostly. A pragmatic, approach, as. English. Within the European, Union is, an. Often used. Language. What. Yes. Well we still have the iris so you know. Officially. It's still a language, within the heel but. I. Think, the Dutch are comfortable, with the English language we, can understand, the product were working on which would become slightly, more complicated, as we visit the grille towards German, and French and even beyond. Nevertheless. I, think I. Wouldn't. Exclude, expanding. To other languages, as, there are many Dutch initiatives. In. Focusing, to our closest, the more close, neighbors. Working. With Germany, this. Their, English, is perhaps, not as, common.
As It is in the Netherlands so, surely. The language we use should. Should. Also be taken, taken. Seriously, is, it the final, answer English I don't know, and. Also the SDG, would say would. Prescribe that, at. Rest like, the national. Language and then the. Second. Leg which would be the language that is most, relevant. For all the countries, around so. If you focus only on the Germans and then the French would say yes what, about us so. I. Would. Say that's the English language. Is for now it's it's, the best second, thing. We could do so. But never yeah we. We. Cannot tell, what whatever, future will bring for us is of course, do. You find that with the English version, of the site when. It comes to that audience, are they English, speakers, who, happen, to be within the Netherlands, or are, they English, speakers, who were outside, of the Netherlands, or is it a mix of both in it so what's. The proportion. Yeah. From the analytics. Point of view we see that 40%, a. Little, bit less. Roughly. 40% of the of, the, visitors has, an IP address, on the Dutch. Ground. The, Netherlands as, for. Their IP, address, so. And. We. Focus mainly on the, the, foreign entrepreneurs who. Want to start, a business in the Netherlands or want to do. Business with with with the Netherlands so has a. Specific. Branch. In another. Outside. Netherlands and they want to trade. Or something, but. Yeah. And, also the, english-speaking. Entrepreneurs. They can force, get. Information, but, it's, not the main. Target. Group for the, English website, good. To know in the difference between the propositions, is that. The. Focus on the the English the website is also promoting. Of course the Netherlands, as a favorable, place to start your business as an outsider and the. Site is not so much a translation. Of the Dutch PSC. Because. This would be that, would mean it's an accessibility, issue actually, of the Dutch platform, to. Have somebody, who doesn't speak the Dutch language and. Inform, him or her. It. Serves, that purpose well. Right, now it could be within that 40% of, businesses. That they are Dutch. Entrepreneurs, that. Are. From. A different origin but, already a long time entrepreneurs. In the metals that just have more. Problems. With the Dutch language and prefer to be served in English. But. Mostly. That's. That's a bit of the difference doing, business with the Netherlands doing business in the Netherlands coming through the Netherlands those are the topics which. Have to focus on business gov, NL and some. Of the information is. Search. The Dutch existing. Audience as well but. It's not as complete as the Dutch offering, on the website there's fewer, articles did. The site is younger it could grow either, direction, or both. A couple of things. First. One thing I guess is is, by. Providing that that. English, language. Experience. Within. A country. That's obviously you know Duchess is the normal is the primary language and, broadly. Across the course of your opinion with the exception, of course of.
The. UK and Ireland all. The other languages, within the EU. Very, different they're not English, so. I'm interested there in the point of view of how, you've. Actually given yourselves, a competitive. Advantage, by, providing, this, English, language experience, so that those companies, that are obviously out, there and they're looking for opportunities, they're. Looking for where they should base themselves, within say, the EU. And. The fact that you are more. Naturally. Found because you've got content, be you likely to be found in Google and other locations, like that do. You kinda, do you actually the moment do any performance, metrics, and is there any measures, that you currently track. Around, you know the, investment, attractiveness, of, Midlands as a result of the site, or is that somewhere. Else looked after that or how does that all work I. Think. Would be, much too arrogant to say we, play. A big role in this. Investment. Climate, and are there, are different initiatives, and there are plenty of initiatives. Also based in English for. Start-up entrepreneurs, and in. The Netherlands I think. It's well known the, the Dutch are among. The. The best. Non-native. English speakers, existing. Probably. Along with the few Scandinavian. Countries, we. Perform, pretty well in English relatively. Well if. It's not our mother tongue. This. Probably. Is not due. To us that, companies. Know this. But. Perhaps yes it adds maybe that we are, growing our. Information. Base online, that's definitely, what we hope, to do maybe very, very small percentage is. Rinsed by, by what maybe but I think we shouldn't take. That part too serious. They. Should probably already know about the Netherlands so probably they already have met Dutch. People abroad, have, investigated. Multiple, levels before. They, even arrive at, this go I know, and. And, we. See in the feedback too we. See that people are like. Being. Helped to make the next step in their in the business and. At. The moment like roughly, 2,000. Visitors a day are. Yeah. Finding, some information, to make the next step so, I think that would say that is the the added value. Business. Gogh to the, -. Maybe. The Dutch, economy all right now. But. Of course yeah we want to we. Try, to improve, that and but, we don't. We. Don't have a KPI. Set. On that right now I, just. Want to make a complete, infracells. Information. And yeah. That's. Fine I mean no I recently, interviewed. The. Director. Of economic development over in the in Switzerland, he Martin go down and, one of the things that they deliberately do we actually, have that English version, of the site. To kind of attract. Investment. Into, Switzerland, which, is obviously even though it's in the middle of Europe that's not a member of the EU so, there. You go and, I actually remember also, previously, reading. I'm. Somebody who likes languages, although, I'm not very good at them so. I did remember once going to some random Google, article, or some article coming off the Google which talked around I think it was about 80%, of all people in the middle and socially, to see fluent, English and. Dutch. Is probably the closest, language there is to, to, English, if. You are someone who's a native English, speaker so. Yeah. Sound, like that but, in, families. It's for. Those linguistic, experts, the languages, look a lot alike but it's. For. Outsider. From England or from the US it, just sounds fair horrible, and over. Because. It is very much like German, we've got these massive long words you know on the, newest line. Or. Something that. Yes. So. No it's. It. Works better for all. Parties involved, at times to speak English and I. Hope, that that's also something. Indeed welcoming, for, entrepreneurs. Coming to the Netherlands they won't. Ever they, won't have a problem in their daily life they can even. Get their stuff in the supermarket, and get by with. Speaking. English, so. Yeah. That gives a competitive, edge maybe yes but I'm. Sure that will, slowly. Grow, on the European, scale as well whenever we go to Brussels, we speak English. With. With with other team, members from different states it's it's the the the, language by choice. Because. It connects, to it connects to the most maybe, they're the french-speaking would like, to see it otherwise at. Times but I, could, try my very best but it's never going to be as good. One. Thing to add also, especially in the startup like. The scalable, startups the, the highly, innovative. Startups, also. English is very very, widely used in the Netherlands. And. And yeah and yeah, some some countries are. Less. For a nice oriented, but we are. I've. Actually been in Midland, three times in, my life and spoke. English the whole time and everyone understood me so that was fine. Lawrence. My thing you actually mentioned was better than startups, and and.
I Think if she was Walter mentioned earlier on or around the, different. I'll. Use the word culture, for lack of a better word, at the moment around how. The maturity. Exists, within Dutch project, this is the English project. And how the English project project feels more like a startup. Do you have teams, who, can't, cut across both, it sound a little bit like you've got some people that do and some people that don't and how does that work from a you. Know from that point of view of something that's a more mature model. Versus having it's more a start-up model from a service delivery perspective, in government. Yeah. We have a. Chow, approach, so, in, our team we have the, the. Agile scrum. Approach. And in. In as. A result we can, have. A short cyclic. Improvements. Development, and. For. Business cope that's very nice because, being. So young, we, can just check. What are the. Different. Improvements. We want to make and also realize them quite quickly, so. That's really. And. But, actually we started with HR working. Earlier. I think maybe Walter, knows maybe. Four, for two or three years or even more also. For the dirty websites, but. I think that's really important, to, have like every. Every. Month make, improvements. On the content side of you on the development, side of you but also for. The insight, and analytics, but maybe what you can explain, a bit more about that. The. English website started, as, in. A project phase as most things do a project, is defined and a budget, is given for specific. Working. In, the agile scrum method, allowed us to use, the. Development. Base that we have for. The Dutch portal. To, give a percentage to, the, English starting, up website. Because. Starting, a separate, full-fledged, team for English would have been more costly, and. After. The initial. Project phase was over it was quite easy for us to embed, the, activities, for English when it comes to the product development, itself, the. Mostly technical product, development, that is into.
The Same group of development. Which. Provides. A fully functional, portal, when it comes to the other business, aspects. Where. You would look at the stakeholder, management where, you would look at running, the. Business. Around content, creation, the, editorial. Boards, that we have these, are pretty, much separate, activities, obviously, because we use native, speakers, for the English content and, there. Is we. Sit closely, together in each other's proximity. So that also allows. Working. With each, other's content, types asking, each other for, what. Would be a good plan what would be good to do but, there. Is still part. Of it is a separate, business which, which Louden's, focuses, on for a hundred percent and. It's a smaller group the Netherlands has this this big amount. Of stakeholders. Which have representatives. Within the team and this is you know still young for English so we plan to expand, this but we, might even improve on, what, model we use to do that and, who, is in charge of what element, we have some lessons learned of course in the, history of our, Dutch, project, and in. Becoming. Mature perhaps, we can make English. PSC. Mature. Quicker or mature, with a. Few, less challenges, that we had in, the years for, the Dutch portal. I. Guess I'm wrapping things up where, do you see things going for, both, of the the Dutch and the English instance. Over the next couple of years. Yeah. I think. Maybe. Two at all so that's that's, having. The agile approach we, have, quite. Relatively. High speed of, development for, government standards at, least. So. And. Also. Like. Having the the Dutch. Website. As as. An example. For. The ins website is very very. Good to have like the, maintenance, and also the discharge. Yeah. Approach to. Have it like embedded into a, different. Or, into. A specific. Yeah. Throat. Sword yeah. I. Think, for the evolution. Of on. The name is spline and also business cough. Yeah. I was. Coming. Up at, the key of course. Or. Development, we are we're, trying to. Prepare. For, that. May. Be about what you said Lawrence could you pick that what was the most in time of that thing there's just a little bit of. Anything. Going on they what was it called.
The. Law. Makes. It we want to bear for that and. Regarding. Those, websites we are preparing. Some, economy. Improvements. Maybe, about I can explain. A bit about about. That and also the future. And. Also. The English. Website we want to have more content, partners, and. Yeah. I've have the. More. Research house. Exact. Which is entrepreneurs. Different. Private, maybe new webinars, as well. Multi-platform. I think what counts, is that we. Will continuously. Improve, and experiment. With our navigation. Structures, or content, types, what do we have what what what. Works what is new a few years ago we had the webinars, well now, everybody has webinars, so we're trying, to see what. What. Else is there how can we optimize that, how can we engage the customers, in better ways will be big diving into more. Surveys. Looking, at what what what are the needs and one of the important, things, currently. Which, has, our focus, in the, Dutch portal, is. Getting. To know the audience even, better and how do we do that is by. As I mentioned earlier we are also now connected, beyond our own a single point of contact. In bringing our information. - for. Example regional. Locations. Geographical. Locations, in the Netherlands so we we're curious. Getting. Input from what happens there what is necessary for, entrepreneurs. In specific, regions of the Netherlands, as well as in specific, business sectors so we we, connect to those local governments we connect to these business, sector organisations, to see how, can we get to know these entrepreneurs. Better in providing. Them the experience. They need from the government by identifying, their, needs in those specific sectors. Which is I think, going. To be our role in the near future to. Be. Not. Only a distribution. Hub but also becoming, a feed that hub from. Gathering. These, data. Gathering, these wishes from entrepreneurs in, places, where the government has been a segment. That still on a level, of different layers, and. We can use, that feedback what do they need in this sector what do they need in this, region, and bring, that back to the highest level. Of government saying you are missing, something you are perhaps wanting. To focus on something that we signal, only in the south of the Netherlands or only in the specific city and, I see a lot of development there but this, is also a new. Trajectory. For. Us and provides. Many challenges, how. Specific. Do we want to be how, big is the audience in those specific, elements, those, are the things we are looking at right now. Excellent. Gentlemen. That's been, really. Really interesting I've learnt a lot I hope our listeners have to thank. You very much for sharing, with me and. Mouldings. Today around, the Dutch experience. With delivering, both, business, thoughts oh god Berlin ill and. Thanks. For listening to government to business for.
Show Notes and how Gavin can help your department, or agency, visit. Government. To business comm.
2018-08-27 13:26
