Scaling up Gem
Gem in the news
Last week there was attention for the Kwartaalupdate held the previous Thursday. State Secretary Eric van der Burg, ICTU and the VNG posted about it (in Dutch).
An important ambition is to scale Gem up. That is what we are getting to work on now.
Scaling Gem up to 150 municipalities
State Secretary Eric van der Burg set out the ambition of connecting all 345 municipalities to Gem, including those in the Caribbean Netherlands. The State Secretary summed it up like this:
"I am an ambassador for Gem. And a Friend of Gem. I would like to see the number of participants grow. My position is: the more municipalities take part, the better the quality gets."
Naturally, we agree wholeheartedly. A growing Gem community makes Gem stronger. Every new municipality brings valuable knowledge, experience, tools and ideas with it. Together we make sure Gem fits the needs of residents and municipalities better and better.
The ambition: 150 municipalities with Gem
We are keen to keep growing with Gem. 27 municipalities are taking part at the moment, and talks are under way with 14 more. The ambition is to grow to at least 150 Gem municipalities by the end of 2027.
Of course, every municipality keeps the freedom to make its own choices. You can choose to develop your own chatbot for residents independently or together with other municipalities. At the same time, Gem is being developed further with public funding. That is precisely why we believe collaboration is an efficient way to spend public money. By pooling knowledge, experience and innovations, municipalities do not have to reinvent the same wheel over and over.
The strength of Gem shows in that collaboration, and in the added value that participating municipalities experience in practice. For instance, we are working on further improving answer quality with the help of automated quality measurements. That is a complex issue, and all municipalities benefit if we tackle it together.
Will you join us?
Do you work at a municipality that has not yet connected? Then we warmly invite you to get to know Gem. We would be glad to talk with you about the possibilities, and to hear what wishes and ideas you have for improving Gem further. Go to virtuelegemeenteassistent.nl.
Do you know colleagues at other municipalities? Feel free to point them to Gem, so that together we can build ever stronger digital public services.