The Dutch Institute for Quality of Dutch Municipalities (KING) launched their renewed Waarstaatjegemeente.nl. This website offers a lot of data and information on all of the Dutch municipalities and offers possibilities to take a look at statistics on 15 themes. It provides municipalities the possibility to gain insight in multiple indicators on several societal areas such as livelihood, saftely, youth and health issues. Even though all the information is in Dutch only, it is an example worth sharing.
The website is meant for municipal administrators and civil servants, but is also very suitable for other interested people who want to know how their and other municipalities are doing. The dashboard includes data on the percentage of families living from a benefit or the percentage of citizens that is member of an association and so on, which can be used for setting up municipal policies or to compare the municipal data with (neighbouring) cities and villages. Municipalities can use the data from the dashboard in policy making, agenda setting, justifications of policies or for research of their own.
According to KING the importance of this kind of tools and websites can be found in the following: ‘[t]he right, up-to-date and targeted information is the food for progress for citizens, organizations and municipalities. Now and in the future. In our rapidly changing society, a vision on information management is crucial for municipalities. A vision that touches every aspect of government. A vision that helps them to determine and strengthen their role in the future.’ KING acts as a partner for Dutch municipalities on information management issues. It wants to be a knowledgeable partner, that contributes to the development of this vision and which helps municipalities to get their information management right.
The data has been obtained from several sources and researches, such as polls among citizens and entrepreneurs and multiple central data sources.
Sources: KING website and Waar Staat Je Gemeente website.