Dutch Future Centre for social innovation and mediation between activists and government unit

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Five Dutch Future
Centers for the
Public Sector
Hank Kune
Future Centers in the public sector are
innovation-enabling workspaces for civil
servants and their stakeholders in society. They
are facilitated knowledge-networking
environments for tapping into collective
intelligence: high touch, technology-enhanced
learning spaces, where people are encouraged
to let go of assumptions, not to accept easy
answers and to maintain their drive to design
innovative solutions to issues that matter.
They have the potential to make policymaking
– and implementation - both faster and more
effective: more user-oriented, more focussed on
systemic perspectives on societal issues, more
apt to remain relevant in the complex and
fast-changing social contexts of the future
At the moment there are five future centers
initiatives at the level of national government
in The Netherlands. They operate in different
sectors, deal with themes characteristic of their
sector, and pursue projects to resolves issues in
their field. They are all different and not all of
them officially call themselves ‘future center’.
Four of them work within a mother
organisation – a ministry or directorate of a
ministry – to support specific goals at this
organisation. One center is a joint venture of
four ministries, aimed specifically at a broader
group of civil servants, with the intention to
work with issues spanning different sectors.
All the centers are still in development, and as
work-in-progress, they are learning how to
operate effectively in the complex contexts of
their field. They are prototypes of what ‘future
centers for government’ can become. What they
share are common goals, aspirations,
inspiration and working methods.
Located in different parts of the country, with a
wide range of specific thematic content, diverse
facilities, and complementary approaches, they
complement and reinforce each other, and –
where possible – they cooperate to bring
sector-spanning social issues into sharper
perspective.
Brought together in an active network at the
end of 2003, people from the five centers now
form the core group of people from more than
10 organisations who come together regularly
to share experience, discuss mutual concerns
and explore possibilities of collaborating in
actual projects.
The five centers are:
The Country House (Het Buitenhuis), a
facility ‘for creative and innovative work in
national government’ a joint venture of four
ministries: Economic Affairs, The Interior,
Finance, and Housing, Spatial Planning &
the Environment.
Mobilion, future center prototype at the
Department of Public Works & Water
Management (Rijkswaterstaat).
Future Center ‘The Shipyard’ (De Werf), at
the Tax & Customs Administration.
Castle Groeneveld, National Center for
Forests, Nature and Landscape, of the
Ministry of Agriculture, Nature & Food
Quality
Academy SZW, part of the Ministry of
Social Affairs & Employment (SZW).
The Country House (Het
Buitenhuis)

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Future Center for four ministries: Economic
Affairs, The Interior, Finances and Housing,
Spatial Planning & the Environment.
The Country House (Het Buitenhuis) is set up to
facilitate creative and innovative work in
national government. It is a joint venture of
four ministries. The Country House works with
clients in government to tackle multi-sector
social issues in an effective way. It is an
informal and dynamic working environment
where people and organisations can meet each
other, gain inspiration, play with ideas and
experiment with innovative work concepts. It
opened officially in November 2004 with the
intention of functioning as a future center for
national government. Since the summer of 2004
there have been concrete results in a variety of
projects.
Het Buitenhuis concentrates on people –
specifically civil servants from various
ministries – as the most important source of
renewal in government. A variety of
workspaces and supporting facilities create an
atmosphere that invites openness, relaxation,
broad outlook, defining initiatives, and taking
responsibility for action. It strives to enhance
the innovative capacities of civil servant and to
create purposeful cooperation between
committed people and organisations in
government. Het Buitenhuis has a small,
dedicated team of facilitator-advisers, and is
looking at the possibility of creating a
government-wide circle of facilitators to take
on a broad range of assignments and projects.
The attic of a country house
The Country House is a retreat in the center of
the The Hague, the administrative capital of the
country. The main facility is located on the top
floor of the Academy of Finance and Economics,
a spacious modern building in the city center.
While not a part of the Academy, it can make
use of other facilities and spaces of the
Academy as well as the roomy attic.
The place feels like you’ve come here to “get
away from it all”. Downstairs there is a
spacious lounge with big glass windows
overlooking the inner courtyard; you already
feel you can relax here. And then there’s the
attic; a place to get away from your work, come
to rest, think more freely, and play with new
ideas.
The attic consists of two large multifunctional
working spaces, which can be set up according
to the needs of a particular session. To the left is
the Kitchen, with its coffee machine and long
wooden kitchen table for up to 20 people. To
the right is the Office, with movable work-units
on rails, fold-down tables and lots of surfaces
you can write on.
Het Buitenhuis can also use a number of other
spaces within the Academy building: the
sunroom looking out on the interior garden, the
downstairs lounge and restaurant, and the roof
gardens. These agreeable spaces invite people
to distance themselves from their work,
encouraging discussion, openness and new
perspectives. They are especially useful for
informal encounters with colleagues, and for
relaxation and reflection.
An electronic meeting space is an integral part
of the Country House approach. Group decision

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room (GDR) technology can heighten the
effectiveness of creative techniques, provide
anonymity where needed and provide a digital
record of ideas and opinions. It is useful for
prioritising ideas and options, and in
decision-making. Its role as part of an
experimentation and prototyping studio is being
explored at the moment.
The name Het Buitenhuis
The name is Dutch, and is grounded in Dutch
tradition: it is neither foreign nor affected. It is
easy to remember and symbolizes the
hospitality that is part of its formula and is
characteristic of its approach.
Country houses are traditionally locations
where people can escape from the pressures of
the daily grind, often with their weekend
guests. These are places where people can
recharge their batteries and contemplate their
ideals for the future (and how to achieve them),
inspired by nature, their gardens, libraries and
art collections. They return to their work full of
energy and new ideas. There have always been
many countries houses for busy managers and
diplomats in the area around The Hague, and
now there is a new one.
Het Buitenhuis (The Country House)Zeestraat
86-90, 2518 AD Den Haag
Telephone: 070 – 342 4944
www.het-buitenhuis.nl
Jur Kosterbok, Director
Mobilion
In Mobilion the natural metaphor is movement.
The complex energies of traffic and water
management are perfectly captured in this
small building situated in a green strip of land
between busy highway and equally busy canal.
You enter this unassuming barracks-like
building and right away you know you’ve
entered the dynamic world of Rijkswaterstaat
(RWS), the Department of Public Works &
Water Management.
‘Experimental park’ for the development of a
Future Center for the Department of Public
Works & Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat)
This is a meeting place and atelier space at the
intersection of main transport routes in the
middle of the country, and it offers the
Department a central location where her
personnel, together with their relations and
stakeholders in society, can meet, learn from
each other, work together, and develop ideas to
tackle the challenges of traffic and water
infrastructure in an innovative way.
Since the summer of 2002 Mobilion has been
functioning as an experimental park for a yet to
be realized Rijkswaterstaat Future Center, which
is planned to open in 2007. This future center
will be part of a new building, also in Utrecht,
in which several divisions of the Department
will work. It is up to Mobilion to prototype the
most promising possibilities for designing the
interior spaces, planning the functions, and
developing the working methods best suited to
this ambitious project.
How Mobilion became a prototype future
center

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Rijkswaterstaat – the Department of Public
Works & Water Management – is the largest
directorate-general of the Ministry of Transport,
Public Works and Water Management, with a
Head Office, 10 Regional Offices and six
Specialist Services. It is responsible for ensuring
that Ministry policy is implemented, in part by
maintaining and administering the principle
roads and waterways.
Rijkswaterstaat runs a number of corporate
innovation programmes in order to ensure the
continued ability of the organisation to meet
the needs of mobility and water management
in a complex, continuously changing society.
These include major innovation programmes
for transport and mobility (Roads to the Future),
for water management (Water as Innovation
Source), and for increasing the overall
innovative capacity of the organization
(innovation impulses).
In 2000, as part of an organization-wide
innovation impulse (NOVA, 1998-2001), a
group of civil servants visited the future centers
of Skandia and ABB in Sweden. People were
enthusiastic about adapting the concept to the
department. The presence of a number of
senior officials proved to be important in
getting permission to put this idea into practice.
Permission was granted in 2001 to develop the
concept of a RWS Future Center as part of a
new building project. Mobilion, a regional
information centre for large infrastructure
projects, would serve as a breeding ground,
experimenting with the approach and methods
required for the new center. MobilionPlus was
officially launched as an experimental park in
October 2002. At the end of 2003 the business
case for a 3000 m2 Future Center in the new
building – roughly 5% of the total space,
equivalent to the area that Mobilion now
encompasses
Mobilion has revamped its activities, changing
in the course of several years from a regional
information center for infrastructure projects
into a prototype future center, an active
innovation heart for the organisation and safe
haven for thinking together with external
stakeholders about how best to achieve mutual
goals. In essence Mobilion is already the RWS
Future Center, a “future now center” as one of
the Department’s innovators puts it.
The public is welcome; groups of
schoolchildren, meetings of regional and
national special interest groups, and other
visitors are often present at the same time as
innovative workshops and ateliers. In this open
atmosphere it is difficult to forget that public
sector organisations work to serve society, that
they have both an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’, and
that both inside and outside have a role to play
in making the Department an effective,
innovative, public-oriented service provider.
Mobilion
Groenewoudsedijk 2a, 3528 BG Utrecht
Telephone: 030 284 0784
www.molbilion.nl
Theo Bergonje, Director
The Shipyard (De Werf)
Future Center of the Dutch Tax & Customs
Administration
The Tax and Customs Administration has
renovated an entire building for its future
center. It uses the metaphor of ‘ the
organization as ship’ and the center as
shipyard – where personnel can return to shore,
refurbish their workspace and facilities, and
renew their energy before setting out again to
pursue its goals and objectives in society. The
building itself has a long organisational history,
and is perceived by Tax Administration

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personnel as their house. Inside, the new and
the old are combined. There is a beautifully
renovated ballroom, a modern demo-center
where computer programmes are tested and
demonstrated, an Xceleration room for
brainstorming, a quiet room for reflection –
which has proved quite popular – and scenario
rooms for experiencing different perspectives
of how Dutch society may develop. In this
‘corporate house’, tax personnel feel at home,
work easily, are able to leave information on
the walls, and get to know the innovative
ins-and outs of their own organisation better.
The Tax and Customs Administration wants to
encourage its employees to deliberately use
their brainpower to achieve continual renewal,
actively seeking to realize concrete
improvements and/or innovations of their
work. Future Center De Werf actively supports
this stretching of brainpower, offering an
inspiring environment and process facilitation.
To do this, The Shipyard has created an
atmosphere that employees enjoy: warm,
personal and enthusiastic – not only in this
building, but also on their Intranet site, and in
locations they use throughout the organization.
As stated in their vision document: “The Dutch
Tax and Customs Administration will create a
Future Center as a beloved place, a place you
really want to visit. It should be a center for
inspiration, to get away from daily concerns, a
place to find and share knowledge, a meeting
place for the entire organization… The facility
will become the physical anchor of the
organization and its identity. The six anchors
[of the Tax & Customs Administration] will
come to life in the Future Center. The facility
and its environment will radiate respect and
awareness, peace and safety. It is a place where
opinions are sharpened, where ideas are born
and can grow to maturity.”
Merging initiatives
In July 2003 the decision was made to initiate a
pilot Future Center, and permission was given
to develop the building and facilities. The
initial period of the pilot was four months. This
period has since been extended several times.
The current evaluation date is set for the
middle of 2006. Since opening its doors, more
than 4000 people have visited and made use of
The Shipyard.
In March of 2005 The Shipyard merged with
the Tax Academy, another innovative initiative
of the Tax & Customs Administration. Together
these two initiatives, under the name Impulse,
will pursue their objectives of continual
renewal, innovation, and the organization as
community.
Future Center De Werf (The Shipyard)
Belastingdienst [Tax & Customs Administration]
Delpratsingel 23
4811 AP Breda
Telephone 076 – 526 0109
Contact: Marco de Bock, Quentin vd Rhoer

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Castle
Groeneveld
Kasteel Groeneveld: National Center for
Landscape and Forests, a castle in the green
heart of the Netherlands, at the cutting edge of
policy and society
An 18th century castle in an English garden?
What does this have to do with the future?
This facility is part of the Ministry of
Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. Its
mission is “to touch people in such a way that
they consciously discover and experience
landscape and nature”. To accomplish this goal,
it organizes activities from three integrated
perspectives: policy, the public, and education.
In this way it can work with Issues on the
policy agenda effectively, opening them to
discussion with a broader public, adding
insights and broadening perspectives. It can
also bring issues of pubic concern to the
attention of policymakers.
Kasteel Groeneveld was built around 1710.
Originally it was surrounded by gardens laid
out in the French style but these were
redesigned in the eighteenth century to form an
English landscape park. The park at Kasteel
Groeneveld still ranks as one of the most
beautiful in the Netherlands.
There is a series of rooms that have been fully
restored to the style of the 18th century,
complete with magnificent murals, as well as
modern meeting rooms. There is extensive
exhibition space devoted to exhibits relating to
nature, landscape and agriculture. At any given
time, there are exhibitions of art and
photography, and exhibitions specifically
geared to children. In this way policy issues
and options are brought to life.
Although it does not refer to itself as a ‘future
center’, Castle Groeneveld has been doing the
work of future centers since 1999. Of all the
Dutch initiatives, it has some of the most varied
experience with future center-like activities:
interactive design studio’s, public debates,
dialogue with thought-leaders and
policymakers, stimulating publications, master
classes, dream sessions, storytelling, and
actively engaging children in thinking about
their environment.
Kasteel Groeneveld Groeneveld 2
3744 ML Baarn
Telephone : 035 – 542 0446
Sim Visser, Director
The Academy of SZW
Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment
(SZW)
Organisations face challenges that ask for an
open, renewing and results-oriented working
method for the modern civil servant. That’s
why the Ministry of Social Affairs &
Employment (SZW) initiated its Academy SZW
in May 2003.

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“Learning while you work, working while you
learn” is the motto of the Academy SZW. Here
the lessons of the past speak powerfully as
departure point for thinking about the present
and future…and in its multimedia theatre The
Universe, the sky is not the limit, but rather the
starting point for thinking about public
responsibility, the role of the civil servant, and
the future of work and social affairs.
The interface of working and learning has
become of extreme importance in modern
society. Our working environment is drastically
changing. There is a lot of information and one
must create policy more often in dialogue with
the surroundings. Organisations face
challenges which require an open, renewed and
results-driven working method. The modern
civil servant needs new tools, insights and
skills. How can we decide which information is
important? How can civil servants best fulfil
their tasks and determine who their partners
are? How can they work effectively in an
international work field?
To answer these and similar questions, the
Academy have developed a multi-faceted
approach, using two component facilities:
Universe and Laboratory.
The Universe is a small theatre, where under a
starry sky, ministry personnel and visitors can
view an introductory film about the history of
social policy and employment issues in the
Netherlands. Through an interactive timeline
they gain insight in both the concerns of the
past and the issues for the future. How was the
care for the poverty-stricken organized in
Leiden in 1650, and how will it be done 20
years from now? Why is the emancipation of
women different in The Netherlands than in
other countries? What were the driving forces
that led to the first The Child Act? What forces
are driving the future?
The Timeline is a game of question and
answers, which develops insight in the various
themes. Thematic contact can be changed to
meet the circumstances. Every form of
corporate story can be told, whether the subject
is ‘the meaning of the European Union’, the
future of social security, the multicultural
society, or how major business corporations are
created. By means of this multi-media mix of
image and sound it is possible – in an
innovative way – to form a picture of the past,
present and future of these issues.
The Laboratory faculties also support these
objectives. The Laboratory is actually a
collection of different rooms where project
teams, management teams, interdepartmental
working groups and trainees can work in a fast
and results-oriented manner. In the acceleration
room an electronic meeting system improves
sharing opinions and decision-making
processes. Video-conferencing facilities are also
available.
Aside from these a future center functions, the
Academy SZW also serves the function of
Corporate Learning Centre. From this role it
offers a varied supply of departmental learning
activities.
Academie SZW,
Wilhelmina van Pruisenweg 104
2595 AN The Hague
Telephone 070 – 333 5542
Contact: Bram Castelein