Netherlands Worldwide

Project summary

The Dutch aims to create a multi-channel one stop shop for citizens living abroad that have dealings with the Dutch government. This one stop shop should allow citizens to find relevant information about all services, get support via the 24/7 contact centre and be routed to the appropriate organisations for transactions.

Willem Pieterson is part of the core project team and has a dual role: as strategic advisor he drives the strategy and advices on the project plan and execution. Furthermore, he leads the (sub)project ‘quality & monitoring’ (Q&M). The Q&M team develops project goals and KPIs, leads development of a data collection infrastructure, analytics framework and (online) dashboards for data presentation.

Background

At present, around one million Dutch citizens live abroad. These citizens need to exercise their rights and duties against the Dutch governments. For example, renewal of their passports, applying for pensions or getting help from an embassy or consulate. In addition, there is a population of about 2-3 million foreign nationals that have ‘some’ relationship with the Dutch government, for example because they studied, worked, and/or lived in the Netherlands. These could be eligible for benefits, might need diploma information or proof that they resided in the Netherlands.

Obtaining these services for people living abroad is not always easy. Time differences and long distances make in person and support outside of (Dutch) office hours complicated. Furthermore, services are scattered across many different organisations, making it hard to find services you need or discover services you may be eligible for.

The project

To improve service delivery for citizens living abroad, the Dutch government took the initiative to create an omni-channel one stop shop for people abroad. The resulted in the project “Loket Buitenland” or “Netherlands Worldwide Service”. Core of the one stop shop is a new online portal that integrates information services from all (national) organisations and routes people to the appropriate services. This creates a logical starting point for citizens, allows for discovery of (new) services and bundling of services according to citizen needs and/or life events. 

This online portal is supplanted by the 24/7 customer contact centre (24/7 CC)  that is currently used for consular services only. The 24/7 CC will be transformed to support all citizens year round that need help or support. This 24/7 CC is unique in:

• It is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. All run from the offices in the Hague
• It provides support in (currently) four languages (Dutch, English, French & Spanish)
• It provides support through the phone, email, social media and (in the near future) chat

Our role

We provide two services:

1. As part of the core project team, we provide consulting services based on our multi-channel and eGovernment experiences. We help draft strategic plans, growth models for the portal and help shape the business case behind the project. We act as the “Devil’s Advocate” to prevent groupthink and keep the project team on their toes and connect the project to other relevant developments in the Netherlands, the EU and the world.
2. We provide project management services. We manage the Quality & Monitoring (Q&M) sub-project. Mission of Q&M is to enable the project’s success. We do this by drafting project goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Furthermore, we manage the creation of a monitoring infrastructure (MI). This MI consists of a cloud based environment in which relevant service data (e.g. call logs, web statistics, contact volumes, online search behaviors) is being collected, stored, analysed and presented. Q&M will create a series of dashboards for project stakeholders for three purposes: a) steering, planning and operations management, b) quality control and assurance and c) change management.