After last week’s trip to Portugal with our entire team, this was a regular week, and the first that our clients were fully back into things as well. So, my calendar is rapidly filling and some deadlines that seemd comfortably in the future until now, suddenly loom much larger. Nothing unexpected, as usually early September is when everyone realises it’s just a few short months until the end of the year.

This week I

• Made inventory of the amount of work we’re likely to have heading into 2024, and how that compares to a first outline of our 2024 budget. Things are looking pretty solid already, provided of course that contracts we think will be signed, will actually be signed in the coming months.
• With our management team took some first steps to internalise some of the insights from last week’s training into our team’s routines and work. This will be a process for some time I think.
• With a police organisation discussed some of the things that came up w.r.t. this assignment during last week’s training, and tweaked our effort for them in that direction.
• Prepared a deep dive session on the Green Deal Data Space for next week in which several DG’s at the European Commission, the project preparing the Green Deal Data Space, the Dutch intergovernmental data strategy team and several relevant Dutch government data holders will participate.
• Had the weekly client meetings
• Wrote the report of the last meeting of the interprovincial ethics committee and drafted an agenda for the next meeting, and sent them out to the committee members. Briefly discussed the path for the rest of the year, to ensure political support and budget after this year (now that the political governance layers has been changed after the spring elections).
• Discussed more intensive exchanges between one of my clients and the intergovenrmental data strategy team. Both are trying to get a handle on incoming EU data legislation, but their basic perspectives are different, and I am working to bridge that boundary.
• Reached out to a team at the Ministry for General Affairs to see if it is possible to get a self-hosted video platform running, to avoid some public sector clients needing to publish on YT with ads etc. I’m surprised there isn’t a government publication platform for media at all yet.
• Participated in the interprovincial digital ethics working group to provide an update on the work of the ethics committee.
• Reached out to the statistics office to hear more about their ethics committee. I am interested in having an overview of the various existing public sector ethics committees, their consitution and their mandate.
• On Friday, as Y had a day off school, went to the entertainmant park Efteling with the three of us. It was perfect weather for it, and a very pleasant day.
• On Saturday picked the apples from our apple tree. A meager harvest, just 15 apples. This is due to the bees not being very active when the tree was blooming in a still chilly spring.