Dutch Societal Innovation Hub (DSIH)

The Dutch Societal Innovation Hub (DSIH), under the lead of the VNG (Association of Netherlands Municipalities) and IPO (Dutch Provincial Organisation), addresses joint societal challenges from the perspective of the public domain and aims to foster knowledge related to digitalisation and enabling technologies at a municipal level. Next to the VNG and IPO, DSIH joins 6 Dutch regional digital ecosystems for this quest, namely: Brightlands Smart Services Campus (Heerlen), Data and Knowledge Hub Healthy Urban Living (Utrecht), Digicampus (Delft), the municipality of Rotterdam and the Urban Development Initiative (UDI) (Eindhoven).

The DSIH has been funded under the European Digital Innovations Hub (EDIH) call of the European Commission, as part of its Digital Europe programme. The grant of the European Commission, together with the national co-finance of the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, will give an impuls of € 4,2M to strengthen the innovation infrastructure of municipalities and provinces in the Netherlands, and thereby also to disseminate methods and digital building blocks through training and knowledge exchange.

I assisted in the creation of the DSIH proposal, together with Euquest, helping VNG and IPO to create a strong proposal for the highly competitive EDIH call.

Manja Weitjens (IPO) and Irene van Hooff (VNG) provided the following quote on my work:

‘During the writing process for the DSIH, the challenge was to arrive at a coherent whole with different stakeholder perspectives. David’s experience with European calls fueled useful discussions. His constructive and flexible working attitude has been valuable to us in delivering the quality that led to an excellent rating’

More information on the DSIH is also to be found on the websites of the VNG and IPO.