A day in Rotterdam

“Good morning. Alarm off, wake up, kids out of bed, fed and to school, coffee. On my smartwatch I see what’s planned for today. My first appointment is in De Rotterdam, luckily, at half past nine. At 9 o'clock I arrive on the 22nd floor. A bit of preparation for what is ahead of me today. Logging-in is easy. Enter my username and password and retrieve the digital token (key) on my mobile and enter it on my laptop. The Citrix session takes a while today, close to a minute before I can get started. In the meantime I quickly check my email on my cell phone. I access my inbox via secure mail which has been enforced by our security officers. I use my fingerprint, quick-and-easy. I see my laptop is ready.

Outlook shows that I have to write an article for Innovato-R, about flexible working, about innovation, things like that. Let me do that right away. I get started but I don't get far. Before I know it, it's time for my first appointment with our new trainee in team innovation. She will work on creating a pool of designers in Rotterdam. This especially concerns internal colleagues with design experience (design thinking, service design, lean management), but also connects with our knowledge institutions and researchers in the city. Our trainee shows plenty of ambitions and she is glad that we gave her the space to work on the assignment she has devised for herself.

Our trainee is already on the right track. I shared a few contacts with colleagues with whom she could take some extra steps. I wish her the best and check my smartwatch again. An hour before my next meeting starts with colleagues from both city development as well as city maintenance. Good to see that I can remain in De Rotterdam this morning. Some days I get to work at all our four office locations. On Flexwhere, a mobile app showing available workplaces, I see that on the 15th floor there is a desk available for me. Nice colleagues here, mostly from the engineering department. Half of them I do not know yet. I give a few print tasks for documents that I need at city hall this afternoon. I will pick them up there and then. With the corporate card that gives me access to all our work locations I log in to any of the printers in Rotterdam and retrieve exactly the documents that I need. The article for Innovato-R that I started this morning on my laptop opened just how I left it earlier. I decide to finish it before my next meeting. I love a challenge.”

In Rotterdam a few developments took place with quite some impact:

• Our ICT is centralized in a shared service center. This shared service center developed the general infrastructure, standardised our application layer and made Citrix possible (logging in location and time independent). We can access our own IT environment from all available workplaces. It is also possible to work location independent via laptop, tablet or smartphone, provided that a data connection is available. Via an app on our smartphone we can request a digital token with a code (a key to gain access to the working environment, to Citrix).
• Our accommodations and the number of workplaces have been reduced to 0.6 workplaces per full time employee (FTE) and permanent or fixed workplaces are a thing of the past (no more plants or photos on desks, even our directors are ‘flex’). As a result, we no longer work at 60 locations, but we have 4 head office locations (City Hall, Timmerhuis, De Rotterdam and Librijesteeg). All colleagues can enter at all locations with their corporate passes. So you can collaborate anywhere and with everyone, if you want.
• In 2012, the number of city departments was reduced from 20+ down to 6 clusters (5 executive, 1 support). Together they form the ‘concern Rotterdam’, with one goal, with one house of functions (HR). This facilitates the job rotation for colleagues (horizontally as well as vertically).
• We have one administration. Operational management budgets are centralized. For most internal collaborations a financial settlement is no longer necessary. This facilitates collaboration throughout the municipality and helps the development of internal services. At the same time, this also creates financial challenges because the benefit of one clusters might create financial stress for another. Periodically our corporate management must reconsider the financial balance.
• In 2014 our innovationNetwork Rotterdam (iNR) came into existence. At the time some 20 colleagues would meet to talk about challenges and innovations. Now we now organize lectures, workshops and knowledge sessions for over 1,600 of our colleagues in the iNR. Colleagues with the role of innovators, scouts and entrepreneur come together in this network. In general they make integral working, exploration, experimenting and learning a new normal. This new normal should make our well organised bureaucracy adaptive as well as reliable.

“It took me almost the whole day in between of meetings and behind four different work stations before the article was finished. I guess I covered a lot of our solutions and ways of working. If anything isn’t clear hopefully those who read the article will be able to find me and ask me for some additional information.”   

Jochem H. Cooiman, Municipality of Rotterdam

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Jochem and John de Ruiter (Project Leader for Innovation, City of Rotterdam) will be host in Turin on 27 November for the workshop promoted by City of Turin and Open Incet “Leading innovation in local administrations: how to create and sustain change through creative communities”
Workshop will share successful practices of the Municipality of Rotterdam, and it will engage participants in applying the principles behind the practices in their organisational context.