Rotterdam’s Chief Digital Officer steps down early

Bas Boorsma took the helm as Rotterdam’s first Chief Digital Officer in August 2021, with big ambitions, high hopes and funding in place for a team for two years. He has now announced that he is stepping down from the beginning of next month.

Boorsma told Cities Today that holding the position had been an “honour” and he “enjoyed the role massively”, but he cited challenges too, such as political shifts that resulted in a lack of alignment on the scope of digital transformation.

Having worked in the urban innovation space for over two decades, the city role provided Boorsma with the opportunity to round out his experience from the private sector and in academia. He worked at Cisco for 11 years until 2018 and before that as Executive Director of the International Network of E-Communities, focused on broadband. He also serves as Professor of Practice for Urban Innovations and Smart City at the Thunderbird School of Management, Arizona State University.

“I wanted to complete the journey,” he said. This shift wasn’t always easy.

“I’m rather entrepreneurial and I don’t like to be boxed in very much,” he explained. “Obviously if you go into the public sector, there’s always going to be a different culture, and a different set of rules apply.”

Outside-in

The vision for Boorsma’s remit was as CDO to the whole city, not just the municipality.

“It was to really work outside-in in terms of partnerships and innovations of relevance for the city, bring that back into City Hall for decision-making, and then act on it,” he said.

“It came with a very special mandate to be able to provide solicited and unsolicited advice to any person in City Hall, from the concierge right up to the mayor. I think the mandate was fantastic. That really allows you to break through walls, ceilings and floors and take your agenda to wherever you need it to be.”

As he steps down, Boorsma believes some aspects of this were more successful than others.

He is proud of several achievements during his relatively short tenure, including driving a more collaborative internal culture, helping build a digital inclusion strategy, and advancing thinking on infrastructure investment, digital ethics, digital twins and education. The team also supported the launch of a participatory platform in one neighbourhood.

Political shifts

However, transformation agendas can often fail to survive political shifts.

Local elections in March 2022 led to Rotterdam City Council being run by a new coalition, which Boorsma said had “a different take on digital” with a particular focus on digital inclusion.

“It is a fantastic topic and one which was always part of the original agenda,” Boorsma commented.

However, he believes the scope is too narrow: “My take on this is that you can be very good at digital inclusion, but if you forget to actually really address the transformational part of the agenda, we’re going to win today’s battle but perhaps lose tomorrow’s war.

“When I looked at the situation once a new council got into place, when I looked at the budgeting and so on, that put me in a very difficult position to fully implement this transformational agenda.”

For Boorsma, digital transformation means also bringing in pressing issues such as energy transition, climate change, the circular economy, and upskilling and reskilling for residents.

He says these components are essential for a resilient city and require vision, strategy and urgent execution.

“You could argue that’s far away from digital but it isn’t: digital provides us with designs to actually address these issues,” Boorsma said.

In late 2021 and early 2022, Boorsma’s team worked on a ‘green digital deal’ to better link these issues up and avoid innovation itself becoming “the next victim of siloed operations”.

The document is “in hibernation mode” but “definitely could and should be acted upon”, Boorsma said.

Avoiding death by pilot

He has other recommendations for Rotterdam and other cities too. One is the power of thinking beyond pilots.

“We shouldn’t think of transformation as something that gets experimented with in small living labs with a small number of pilots that typically die an ugly death and then nothing happens. We’ve seen that in the smart city space forever.

“I think Rotterdam should take large steps to build innovation districts not for the purpose of innovation itself but to really ensure that you bring citizens and multiple stakeholders on board. Do it in multiple areas and earmark different districts for different areas of innovation.”

One regret that Boorsma has from his time with the City of Rotterdam is that he was unable to set up what he calls an “urban innovation complex”, meaning a co-operative structure that brings together different sectors to make things happen.

“An ecosystem is nothing more than having a bunch of great ingredients on your kitchen table but that does not mean you have cooked a meal,” Boorsma said, noting that cities play an orchestration role.

“I encourage every city leader to think of a cooperative structure where you bring investment, education, the public sector, the private sector and start-ups together to address the agenda of innovations that you actually need.”

What’s next?

Boorsma is tight-lipped about the specifics of his next venture, saying he is working under the radar for now and preparing to make a big splash, but this collaborative thinking shows the direction of travel.

The new project brings together “a lot of venture capital and an entirely new methodology in terms of how you build start-ups”. It involves services ranging from talent outsourcing to advisory.

“We have brought all the partners together, we have the investors there, and we’re active across the world in a number of communities already,” Boorsma said.

With Boorsma stepping down, it is unclear if a new CDO will be appointed in Rotterdam and whether the team will remain in place or be redeployed elsewhere in the city. Boorsma believes the CDO office should continue with the right mandate but doubts it will happen.

Petra de Groene, Rotterdam’s Director of Economy and Sustainability, told Cities Today that Boorsma “brought us lots of energy, new perspectives, opportunities and results”.

“We will evaluate if a CDO is the right way forward, or if we would like to organise the digital transition of the city in another way,” she said. “However, one thing is clear and that is that the digital transition is essential for many other transitions that we are facing, like the green digital deal. We have been working on the implementation for the last years already and will continue to do so.”

She added: “The Chief Digital Office was indeed new for our organisation. We experienced the importance mostly in having a dedicated team that was looking at digital transformation in the city from a more overarching citizen perspective and [one of] inclusiveness, and by doing that initiating missing objectives and projects, and providing connection between existing projects. This is an important focus area of the current city council so this will continue, but it [will be] evaluated how to better support this within the current organisation of the municipality.”

De Groene said priorities going forward include citizen services, digital inclusion and participation, and the digital economy, as well as implementing data-driven processes within departments.

“This will lead to ever-increasing focus and effort on using digital solutions to improve the services that our citizens, businesses and educational systems expect from us,” she commented. “Of course, we cannot do this alone and we need to partner up with all of these, which we are constantly doing.”

Updated February 24: To incorporate comments from the City of Rotterdam which were sent after the original request deadline.