Two emergency teams. Scripts for crisis scenarios that have been practiced for months. And specialists from COT Institute for Security and Crisis Management who can respond in the event of serious digital disruption: at the ministry of Minister Hugo de Jonge, responsible for the introduction of the Environmental Act, everything has been ready since the end of last year to prevent accidents and especially digital disruption. to cope. With an almost military precision, reminiscent of the preparations for the millennium bug during the turn of the century.
Then it was about the worldwide fear of computer disruptions. One was set up by the government in 1999 Millennium Platform led by former Philips CEO Jan Timmer, who had to prepare the government and business community for digital disaster scenarios. Now Minister De Jonge (Public Housing and Spatial Planning, CDA) has appointed a special government commissioner at the last minute, professor of administrative law Kars de Graaf. He can intervene, solicited or unsolicited, if things really go wrong.
There is also an important difference with 1999. Back then it was about unpredictable computer crashes. This is now taken into account in advance, but De Jonge is betting that in practice they will not be as bad as expected. “No doubt things will happen that will cause critics to say after January; 'hate to say, I told you so'. We have to be sober about this,” De Jonge said in the trade magazine at the end of last month Domestic Administration. “Would it have worked better if we had postponed the introduction again? I'm sure not. You have to leave the side at some point. And that is now.”
Why was the law introduced and what will it mean in practice?
A law
All spatial processes, permit applications and environmental regulations in one automated process. With one digital government counter where stakeholders can view rules and decision-making at the touch of a button, that was the idea behind the entire operation since 2016. Successive ministers such as Melanie Schultz (VVD), Kajsa Ollongren (D66), Hanke Bruins Slot (CDA), Stientje van Veldhoven (D66) and Hugo de Jonge (CDA) promised the House of Representatives and Senate a well-functioning law and a single government counter. With fewer rules, transparent digitalized procedures, more options to arrange permits yourself, from a garden house to a complete new residential area. Where it is not the government, but the citizen himself, who initially determines what his living environment looks like. With at most a marginal assessment afterwards by the municipality or province involved. Thousands of ministerial regulations have been combined in the new law. Local rules and zoning plans are all linked to one gigantic national digital database, the DSO.
It was precisely this digital effect that turned out to be the Achilles heel. The introduction of this law was postponed six times because the digital systems were not in order. Are they now? Internal warning of a 'paradise for lawyers' where citizens are stuck and urgent issues such as housing shortage and the nitrogen approach are further delayed. De Jonge is no longer interested in that warning: “Of course there will be lawsuits. But, mind youthey already exist. The current environmental law is also already one lawyers paradise.”
The same mantra can be heard in his ministry. We are ready to start, but not finished with that law yet, is the message. Because this is such a drastic change that a cultural change must first be initiated. While that has not been the message from ministers in parliament in recent years.
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2 billion ICT project
There, a law was promised that citizens could get by with, but which was also necessary for the enormous construction tasks of the government in the coming years. And for the nitrogen problem and the energy transition. But things have already gone wrong recently during the trial run of new environmental plans, permits and building applications. Due to the multitude of software suppliers involved. Because ICT systems are insufficiently coordinated and therefore show glitches. And because the national database, which experts say is one of the government's most expensive IT projects at 2 billion euros, has grown into a fragmentary repository of information.
Yet De Jonge was satisfied in October, when, after much hesitation, the Senate gave the green light for the introduction of the law. Despite hesitations from his own officials, architects and software developers who sketched doomsday scenarios in which housing construction comes to a dramatic standstill. With lost building applications, municipal officials who cannot guarantee services to citizens and architects who do not even dare to apply for building permits for fear of chaos.
The ministry takes into account digital crashes, faltering permitting and, at municipal level, digital counters that do not function. But enough practice has been done, as was the assessment just before New Year's Eve. The systems now have to prove themselves. Because no one dares to predict what will happen from January onwards when citizens, provinces or municipalities flood the systems with new plans and permit applications. Can the software handle that? The fact that the software fails here and there is not the ministry's biggest concern, as the permit applicant can always physically visit the city hall. And municipalities can still work temporarily with the old legislation: a transition period of ten years has been agreed and many municipalities have adapted their services accordingly.
Simpler
In Leeuwarden they think they can get by with this new law, despite the disaster scenarios that are ready at the ministry. There they see citizens struggling with unpredictable questionnaires before a permit is processed. “Anyone who now applies for a permit for a flagpole must answer the question of how they intend to live in it,” says Marianne Swart, until recently the Environmental Plan/Environmental Act task manager at the municipality of Leeuwarden. That is why Leeuwarden has created eleven forms for the most common requests.
Building applications and zoning plans submitted last year are still processed under the old regime. Furthermore, Leeuwarden starts with a clean slate. No transitional measures, the Environmental Act is simply applied. “We already started the preparations in 2017. Also with the possibilities to make it easier for the citizen.” Such as when installing a dormer window. A new home or the renovation of a monumental building. Solar panels on the roof, just a selection from the top 10 of the most common permit applications in Leeuwarden.
“For example, when building a shed, there were all kinds of rules about the height and roof slope. We said: if in the past we always put a green check mark on such plans, you now no longer have to apply for a permit for the construction component. This means that it is no longer regulated separately for each home how high it can be built. Except in the old village centres, where the municipality wants to enforce the old rules.” With a further test afterwards: that of the aesthetic criteria. “Plans must comply with this.”
No further delay is necessary for Leeuwarden. “We are now just going to implement that law and find out what works and what doesn't.” It won't be flawless either, according to Swart. “But we hope that in a few years we can say that it was a mega job that also yielded a lot.”
'A crazy chain'
Former administrative law professor Peter Nicolaï does not share that optimism, if only because he believes the ministry is lagging behind the facts. As a member of the Senate for the Party for the Animals, he saw how that law was pushed through politically. As an experienced administrative law teacher, he was used to reading legal texts, but this law lacks rationality. “There are simply 23 existing laws stuck together with some implementation regulations and then you end up with about a thousand pages of legal text. But what are they for? Fifteen years ago, decentralization was necessary. So that municipalities could gain more control over their spatial planning policy. But society has changed, we are now dealing with nitrogen, housing shortage and the energy transition. We want to have national control over this. The whole idea behind the operation is therefore outdated.”
And then, according to Nicolaï, there is a digital disaster looming. “That everyone will soon be looking at a black screen. That you apply for a permit, but see something completely different on your screen. So people get angry and go to court. So that we will soon have a crazy chain of licensing and then a stalled chain of legal protection, including penalty payments because the deadlines are not met.”
Nicolaï also experienced how there was a culture of fear at the ministry. Officials who were pressured to keep quiet about criticism of the law. “External advisors who saw that things were going wrong, but were given the political assignment to meet deadlines. Or keep their mouths shut. I created a reporting point for that and serious complaints were received there.”
Nicolaï was one of the senators who tried to prevent the introduction of the law until the end. “The minister did not want any delay. I have tried to get a compensation fund set up for affected citizens. Because if the minister is so sure that everything will go smoothly, then there can be no objection to such a compensation fund. But the minister did not want that. Then you're actually saying: those risks are indeed there, but we're just going to continue?”
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Ready for the law
Yet there is also local relief that the law has not been postponed again. Such as in the municipalities of Putten and Waalwijk. Annelies Boonman, through management consultancy firm Stout Groep, is responsible for the introduction of the Environmental Act there. “You can keep procrastinating, but at a certain point the internal knowledge disappears. Then a lot of money has been invested for something that remains on the shelf. For example, we have training programs that were only rolled out when it was clear that the law would finally be introduced. Otherwise you're giving course after course to people who can't use it. That's just a shame.”
Putten and Waalwijk are broadly ready for it, Boonman expects. “Perhaps not yet at a detailed level. We need more practical experience for this, to know whether we are 90 percent ready. And what does that missing 10 percent mean? Does something go wrong or is it a matter of ticking a few boxes? We knew that at the beginning of this year, perhaps that is the fun part of the whole process, you can also turn it into a change task.”
Opinion on Environmental Act page 18
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