Boosting common-ground adoption in cities

A more proactive, accessible digital government

Transforming the visa application system

Increasingly globalised economies, the rise of budget airlines and digital nomadism, have increased travel and trade opportunities for those with a thirst for adventure or an eagerness to do business beyond borders.

The Netherlands in particular have seen an increase in tourist and business travellers, with short-stay visas issued by the Netherlands increasing sharply in the period 2011-2017 by more than 45 percent to 621,000 per year.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) wished to transform their paper-based Schengen Visa application process to a digital one, to streamline and improve the process by which foreigners apply for entry visas to the Schengen countries.

Transforming a document-driven process

The Diplomatic ePortal is an online system for registering staff members at foreign missions and intergovernmental organisations (such as the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, Europol and the European Space Agency). The Netherlands hosts more than 100 embassies and 22,000 foreign employees of these organisations. 

The personal data these individuals provide needed to be transferred to a highly secure internal digital system, which would significantly expedite a formerly paper-based process.

Democratising Dutch decision-making

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course of Dutch science by means of subsidies and research programmes. NWO promotes quality and innovation in science.

NWO organizes the National Research Agenda. This national initiative gives science and society a unique opportunity to contribute to the debate on important issues that will be researched in the next ten to twenty years, and to contribute ideas on widely recognized issues. The aim of the Dutch National Research Agenda is to ensure that scientists, companies and society work together to tackle current scientific challenges.

Transforming the permit application process

The Hague is home to many public events each year: cultural festivals, markets, and more. Citizens or organisations who want to organise events on their own property or in public areas, must submit a request for a permit to host the event. The permit needs to include a map illustrating the event's layout as well as its facilities.

The Municipality of the Hague wished to transform the process for applying for such a permit. Functionality and user-friendliness were the top priorities.

Enhancing fact and policy-based decision making

The demographic composition of Dutch villages, cities and regions is changing, and so too is the demand for services and public institutions, complicating the planning process. 

Commissioned by Public Result, the Transition Atlas is an important tool for exploring this balance. With it, senarios created reflect the impact that future facilities can offer. The scenarios then promote discussion with stakeholders, and from them, business cases developed to explore operational consequences. By granting access to open data, regional planning authorities can predict the impact that individual choices will have on demand for local services.

Transformation of the UK Research and Development funding service

Innovate UK exists to drive science and technology innovations that enhance the UK economy through the provision of grants and funding. Historically, their manual application process presented many challenges:

• Disconnected processes and multiple legacy IT systems
• Inconsistent data and no central reporting
• Manual administration tasks prone to errors
• Complex, hard to understand user journeys and content

They appointed WORTH to develop their Innovation Funding Service - a customer-focused digital solution that replaced all non-digital internal and external channels and services and was built inline with the Government Digital Service (GDS) standards.