Foundation for Service Design in the Netherlands


Draft proposal for setting up a foundation to promote greater collaboration between industry and government, the discovery of new service potential between public and service sectors, and the development licenseable and reusable design assets.

This proposal is part of the continued efforts by the small group of organizations (founding members) who have a common interest in promoting a system for design and innovation in services.

The next phase is the formalization of those efforts, setting of organization and infrastructure, and the development of a pool of consultants and trainers, licensed and certified to use the design#code system.

July 2015, Majid Iqbal and Ko Mies


The Problem Space

Promises of prosperity and social impact require big changes within a short period of time. Otherwise governments get voted out and leaders get replaced. Big change requires bolder policies and strategies, which, when implemented within a short time, can place enormous stress and strain on the human capital and financial assets.

Under pressure to assure success (and avoid failure), policy makers, project managers and service providers, all become careful and risk-averse. They scale down ideas and ambitions, to make them safe enough to implement. Then the problem is, when the implementation is successful, it still falls short of the original promise, leading to further disappointment, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment.

More is promised in the next cycle. Lessons are learned. Risks and costs get “priced in” for the next project and contract. Budget pressure increases on the buyer side. Margin pressure increases on the provider side. There is an increase in the overall costs and risks across the entire system. More constraints lead to more compromises. Bigger disappointments.

We want to break this vicious cycle by encoding policy and strategy into design, and expressing the design of a service in the form of a code. Design as code can enable fast and parallel execution of policy and strategy while reducing coordination costs across sales, innovation, procurement and development teams.
Design as a shared asset between implementing teams and budget areas

The use of high-quality shareable design assets, will increase speed and control in the development and procurement processes, improve coordination between government and service provider teams, and while also reducing the overall cost and risks of failures, giving policymakers and programme managers to confidence to pursue bolder policies and strategies, by better combining internal and external resources (i.e. services).

We have the opportunity to promote the use of common design language for services that facilitates a new kind of collaboration between the government and its service providers; to reduce the deep and systemic risks that erode profit margins and corrode public trust.


1. Forum

Provide a platform for ongoing dialog and discussion between customers and service providers; industry and government; business and ICT. The focus is on extremely hard and unsolved problems, some of which may be undefined or poorly defined.

Members of the forum seek to define them better and frame them in new and interesting ways that lead to the discovery of new service potential. Ideas are defined in an open format called 16x Frames and published on a special register that is available to registered members.

This allows government teams to better articulate the problems they seek to solve and the unfulfilled customer needs that can possibly be served through new or improved services. These services may be offered government organizations such as ICTU, Logius or i-Interim Rijk, or external service providers from the private sector.

  1. Jointly define new service models and concepts. This helps government agencies in particular to more quickly moves ideas towards procurement by engaging minds and intellectual power of their present or future service providers. This helps service providers because they have to wait less longer for government to make up its mind.
  2. Promote a common language for service definition, for use in all documents and discussions. This is presently a major problem (e.g. RVO.NL and Belastingdienst are looking for a better way to express their SDO)
  3. Promote cooperation among service providers even if they are competitors, because eventually they have to work along each other on large contracts. This would be a forum where they can “take the gloves” of and work together to promote faster and cheaper government procurement (so everybody’s sales costs are lower)
  4. Simply a place where the staff or personnel of customers meet and socialize with those of service providers and build new relationships. For example, during the November design#code training people from RVO.NL and Ordina met for the first time face-to-face outside the normal business environment that places too many restrictions or layers of control between business and ICT.


2. Training


There is a need to provide basic training to promote a common design language, the adoption of service design as a means of solving hard problems, and reducing the cost of business between industry and government. The training will also build capacity for projects. The following are the key issues for discussion:

  1. The Foundation will make it easy for design#code training to be available in the Netherlands, by licensing it from design#code, maintaining and updating the training materials, and ensuring its proper.
  2. Provide training facilities for any member to organize and host training. Any member of the Foundation can offer training to their customers. Training workshops can have participants from a single organization (for example the private workshop conducted earlier this year for the Ministry of Defense) or from two or more organizations.
  3. Train, certify and license trainers. Each member of the foundation can have a small group of trainers who conduct the training. It is upto the members if they want to share trainers or use their own. The Foundation will have a small group of trainers (neutral group) that everybody can use. Some of these trainers can be civil servants who can be trusted by all. The foundation will compensate/pay for the time and effort of the trainers from the fees it collects.
  4. Members of the Foundation can sell, package and deliver the training as part of their own service offerings. As part of the licensing agreement, the member organization will pay the Foundation a licensing fee. Some form of revenue or reward-sharing system needs to be put in place. NOTE: This has already been attempted earlier this year, when PBLQ sold two separate training workshops and shared the revenue and profit with design#code.
  5. The revenues from the training will remain in the foundation. and will be used to fund the operations and future development, including marketing, promotion and research, and to pay for the administrative costs.
  6. Foundation members may choose to purchase bulk training credits by paying a fixed annual fee or by purchasing blocks. This way they get a bulk discount or korting. There can also be a samen reis korting is two or more members of the foundation decide to pool their opportunities and resources and jointly sell and deliver training. Advance purchases gets discount. Advance payments will help manage the foundation have working capital.
  7. Non-members can get “FREE” training as part of a consulting project. They pay for the training but get a discount or full refund of the training cost against a future invoice.


Training workshop for the Dutch Ministry of Defense


3 Re/Frame Conference

Two times a year, the Foundation will host two exciting events. The Summer Solstice and the Winter Walkabout. The purpose of these events is to stimulate new ideas and thinking within industry and government on how to solve the hardest design challenges. The event will be simple. Participants will only discuss/present Design Challenges and Case Studies.

Design Challenges would be presented mostly by Customers such as SG, DG, senior policymakers and top managers from the Ministries and implementing agencies. At the event, we have round tables where participants have the opportunity and privilege to reframe the challenge in a new and interesting way. This gives the owners of the problem new insight and new paths for success. It gives service providers the advantage of being in the Breakthrough Binnenhof. They contributed to the reframing and therefore they develop and maintain an advantage over those who did not participate at the event.

Case Studies. Design challenges from the Summer Solstice become case studies for the Winter Walkabout. Design challenges from the Winter Walkabout become case studies for the Summer Solstice. Case studies can show successful breakthroughs and implementations. Or they can show major progress, because some challenges will take more than a year to solve. Participants can vote on the case studies and we can have a prize.

This gives people something to look forward to. It will make the events more exciting. People should be willing to pay something like EUR1000 just to attend. Foundation members will have four free tickets for each event. They can bring their customers to the event. It will be nice to find out who brings who to the dance :-)


4. The Code Repository


  1. Government agencies make available their existing best practices, process definitions, and “service definitions” (SDO), and we convert them into a single common format using design#code. Now these definitions become real service definitions. So we create a code library. Think of it as “GitHub for Government”. We can actually use the real GitHub platform for this.
  2. Government agencies benefit from saving time, cost and money in doing this. It is almost impossible for them to do it on their own because of FTE and budget constraints (almost every agency faces this problem). So they get outside help and their own staff to cooperate. This can partly be funded by government open data initiatives (RVO has some ideas on how to do it).
  3. The foundation will be the trusted third-party to maintain this code repository of service designs. It is free to use for all government agencies and available to members for little or no fees. (To be decided). Over time, new ideas, learnings and insight will lead to updating of the service definitions and design concepts. This means everybody benefits at once. This alone could be the reason why members participate (and pay fees).


5. Publications

The Foundation will publish books and journals to promote design and innovation in the public sector and to broaden the community. Publications can also be a source revenue that can subsidize the other activities of the Foundation such as training and events.

To start with, the Foundation will publish a launching book that introduces the new design language and system of thinking. Every year, the Foundation will publish updates, books with examples, case studies, surveys, and research.


6. Membership Models


The Foundation will attract membership and participation from different organizations with different motivations and interests, based on which they will offer different levels of commitment.

  1. Development Group: This group will be lead by design#code and membership is open to other organizations who are able to commit financial resources. This is a highly restricted membership, due to the involvement of protected intellectual property.
  2. Promoter Group: This group will include organizations who will promote the adoption of the standard, by engaging in sales and marketing activities. Membership is open to other organizations who are able to financial resources. At the moment, PBLQ has expressed interest in joining this group.
  3. Licensee Group: This group will include organizations interest in using advanced levels of design#code for internal projects, or as consultants delivering projects to their client organizations.
  4. User Group: This is a group of individual trained on using design#code as a method, either as employees or customers of the Promoter and Licensee Group, or as individuals or freelance professionals.


7. Pending Actions and Issues

There are several pending actions and issues that are to be addressed, primarily for setting up the Foundation’s structure and organization, including legal status, ownership, and by-laws. Below are the most important issues to be addressed:

  1. What will be the legal status of the Foundation under Dutch law?
  2. What will be the ownership and control structure of the Foundation?
  3. How will be the Foundation be governed and by whom?
  4. How will the Foundation receive initial funding and capitalization?
  5. Who will lead the Foundation on a day-to-day basis?
  6. What are the membership fees for each group?
  7. What intellectual property will Foundation acquire and under what terms and conditions?
  8. Where will be Foundation be located? (Official address)
  9. How will the Foundation be staffed and organized?
  10. When will the Foundation be operational?