Dutch Societal Innovation Hub

2026-07-22

Public sector organizations face societal challenges and lack digital maturity to solve these effectively. While looking for innovations created by public-private ecosystems issues such as a lack of interoperability and working in silos, lead to suboptimal solutions that do not create enough impact. This calls for a closer cooperation between ecosystems and public entities to develop new ways of working. The Dutch Societal Innovation Hub is set up with 2 umbrella organizations representing all local & regional public actors and 5 hubs focusing on public service needs. The goal of DSIH is to solve societal challenges by intensifying cross-ecosystem cooperation, ensuring interoperability, and create mission projects that connect to the DSIH’s overall mission, to add to a sustainable, heathy and safe quality of life in city & region. DSIH hereby builds upon an existing fundament, e.g., public centric values & citizen engagement, used by public entities in the Netherlands. Existing innovations within the ecosystems are shared through a transfer of learnings, testing & validation between the ecosystems. With public service experience and methodology at its core, DSIH will create a learning environment for the digital and green transition. DSIH will 1) develop a cross-sectoral, mission-driven way of working for the public sector to support digital transformation, 2) enhance the accessibility of the ecosystem’s innovation facilities, 3) organize DSIH activities that reinforce each other in bringing solutions to public services demands, 4) creating knowledge transfer among the partnership and the wider network of EDIHs. It will hereby provide a brokerage and knowledge transfer role between public entities and ecosystems. Ultimately DSIH works towards a solid cross-ecosystem & public service innovation infrastructure in Europe, opening room for knowledge exchange on mission projects, building a strong interconnected hub with the help of the DTA & EDIH network.

Netherlands

2026-02-15