The Hague, 20 may 2011

(by Tom Kronenburg)

Minister Verhagen of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation (EL&I) has launched the Dutch Digital Agenda in the Hague, last Tuesday. The Agenda is aimed at 'making companies work smarter'. The Agenda consists of four action lines.

• The first action line is aimed at opening up government data, reducing red tape and administrative burdens. Minister Verhagen will be encouraging all government services to make government data available in the dutch Opendata portal. He presented an example of farmers using government maps, meteo data and environmental data in order to optimize the efforts put into rearing their land. Minister Verhagen explicitly mentioned eLeaf, a company doing just that! To reduce administrative burdens, the ministry of EL&I will build an online company-dossier, where companies that have a considerable amount of contact with government officials (for inspections mostly) can share certain standard data with all of government at once.
• The second and third action lines are aimed at guaranteeing high quality broadband for Citizens and Companies. The ministry will be auctioning off extra 3G frequencies, as well as attacking botnets and other forms of internet-crime.
• The fourth action line is aimed at educating more technology savvy citizens, thus improving the workforce for IT in the Netherlands.

The full text of the speech of minister Verhagen can be found here. The full text of the Digital Agenda.nl can be found here. (all links in Dutch).

The event was further attended virtually by EC VP Commissioner Kroes. She applauded the Netherlands, the Dutch cities and the province of Friesland as they all present Digital Agendas these weeks.Her speech is found here. (Dutch)

Finally, 32 Dutch cities presented their Digital Cities (Digitale Steden) Agenda. All responsible aldermen signed the document live through twitter. The cities aim to be

• Entrepreneurial cities - flexible working facilities, high speed broadband, cloud solutions
• Caring cities - Using Social Media to fight lonelyness, improve tele-care, reducing administrative burdens on people working with the care sector.
• Learning cities - Schools use cloud software, online learning possibilities for youths
• Green cities - Smart Grid, Smart metering and Smart City Controlling (running the city based on sensors and smart technologies)
• Our cities - Open Data, connecting citizens through ultralocal initiatives, e-participation
• Safe cities - improving safety through camera's, Smart City Controlling

More info about these local initiatives is available at http://www.digitalestedenagenda.nl/, also available is the full text of the Digitale Steden Agenda.

Below is a video message (in Dutch) by EC VP Commissioner Neelie Kroes about the Dutch Digital Agenda.