Mendix at Rotterdam municipality

Erik van der Steen is Rapid Application Development (RAD) Coordinator at the municipality of Rotterdam. In 2017, he wrote a recommendation to increase application delivery speed and foster collaboration between business and IT. The choice fell on the low-code platform of the Rotterdam-based company Mendix. The municipality now has 50 Mendix applications in use and another 30 in development. Qualogy is providing Mendix Business Engineers to support the municipality’s growing RAD team.

Mendix meets the need to work agile scrum: a great desire of Erik. The Information Management Department started this initiative to organize collaboration with the business. Since February 2020, the RAD team has become part of the Software Development Department.

First Mendix application
The RAD team started with Erik as coordinator, a solutions architect and 2 junior developers. The first application was built for the supervision and enforcement department. Until then, the 300 city management employees (boas) were using an application that no longer met the security & privacy requirements of the City of Rotterdam. The RAD team successfully rebuilt the application with Mendix. So successful that they win an Impact Award at Mendix World 2019 for the application. A great start.

Erik coordinates the organizational and financial affairs of the RAD expert team. The solutions architect deals with the technical issues, links and data sources. Since the first Mendix application, they have been making continuous improvements to make RAD even more successful and ensure quality.

The success explained
Currently, the RAD team is 40 colleagues in size and growing. Erik explains the success: “A common frustration was the long development time of applications by the IT department. Some applications were already obsolete by the time they were deployed. The rapid development of Mendix applications was immediately perceived as positive. The users feel heard because they are asked to think along and see their own work reflected in the delivered applications. The cooperation between business and IT can count on a lot of enthusiasm. The involvement of employees (often the users) is therefore high.”

“Qualogy is a reliable partner that meets our recruitment needs.”

Targeting Mendix applications
Municipality of Rotterdam continuously develops applications for 3 target groups: citizens, employees and chain partners. Among the applications developed for citizens are applications for registering visitors for parking and for reporting street abuse. Application development for municipal employees focuses primarily on process improvement, speed and quality improvement of services.

Rotterdam Municipality also builds applications for and with chain partners, such as CityTec. Among other things, they manage the city’s traffic light systems. Together they developed Vamos: an application that takes care of everything around malfunctions, such as recording malfunctions and reports of resolved malfunctions.

No restrictions
Mendix has no restrictions for the municipality. Erik: “Mendix meets our needs. Also because they are constantly evolving. For example, with React Native since Mendix 8. The company is also making great strides in storage around IoT applications.

And we regularly participate in Mendix’s beta program. For example, with the Datahub and the ControlCenter. This way we have a front row seat and influence on new functionalities within the Mendix platform. A very big plus: everything is done in the Mendix cloud. With high stability and speed. So no more on-premises.”

Accelerated digitization by corona
Corona has only accelerated the digitization of the City of Rotterdam. Erik: “In March and April 2020, we were able to develop applications very quickly with Mendix for our services to the self-employed and the GGD. For example, an application for applying for financial schemes. The biggest advantage of Mendix compared to traditional development tools is that applications can be adapted to new requirements within a day and can be rolled out by the developer. In other words, you can continuously meet the needs of the user. Especially in these times extra important.

A fine collaboration
Qualogy is one of the municipality of Rotterdam’s partners for hiring Mendix specialists. We like the cooperation from both sides. Erik: “Qualogy is a reliable partner that provides good people. The RAD team has specialized requirements for hired professionals. Qualogy’s Mendix Business Engineers meet these requirements.”

About Erik van der Steen
After 25 years of working in the newspaper industry, Erik van der Steen has been with the municipality of Rotterdam since 2008. First as Information Manager, now as Rapid Application Development Coordinator. In 2017, he wrote an advisory proposal to introduce Rapid Application Development (RAD) with agile scrum working as well as promote the speed of application development. Following his proposal, the low-code Mendix platform is chosen for agile scrum application development. Erik coordinates the organizational and financial affairs of the RAD expert team.