Suzanne Nederlof
Public & Social Domain, Inc.
Suzanne Nederlof is the lead of the Public and Social Sector team at nlmtd. With extensive experience in societal transitions and a background in public administration, she excels at effectively connecting strategy and implementation. Based in Rotterdam, she is committed to driving sustainable impact within public sector organizations.
Carlin Hutter
Consultant
Carlijn brings structure to complex societal issues and translates them into practical, people-centered solutions. She makes challenging situations easier to understand, connects stakeholders through design thinking and co-creation, and helps teams reach clear decisions and tangible results.
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Drawing on current developments and transition challenges, our “Masters of Transitions” series brings together diverse perspectives with the aim of sharing knowledge, exchanging experiences, and jointly developing new insights.
On June 16, resilience was the central theme.
In recent decades, organizations, networks, and public services have evolved with a strong focus on efficiency, predictability, and optimal collaboration. This has delivered significant benefits. At the same time, the context in which these systems operate is becoming increasingly dynamic and less predictable. Geopolitical tensions, digital threats, social unrest, and climate-related events show that disruptions are no longer exceptions but part of the reality in which we operate.
This raises a fundamental question: how can we ensure that public organizations and networks not only function efficiently when everything goes according to plan, but can also continue to operate when circumstances suddenly change?
During the event, professionals from the (semi-)public sector explored this question from multiple perspectives. Not only from the lens of crisis management, but also from the broader ability of organizations, networks, and society to remain adaptive and resilient in a world where uncertainty is increasingly the norm.
Resilience Requires More Than a Plan
Thijs Bosch, responsible for pandemic preparedness at RIVM, opened the afternoon by reflecting on the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. His contribution made clear that the greatest challenge lies not in capacity or resources, but in the ability to scale effectively across a chain of organizations.
Plans are necessary, but never sufficient. Just as a top athlete trains to perform under pressure at a critical moment, organizations must practice, experience, and adjust. This is what bridges the gap between what seems logical on paper and what must hold in practice.
This theme continued in the keynote by Peter van Burgel, CEO of AMS-IX. While pandemics require organizational scalability, digitalization exposes a different type of vulnerability: our growing dependence on big tech.
This dependence is not only technical. It stems from choices driven by convenience, speed, and efficiency. By placing data, infrastructure, and platforms with a small number of tech providers, organizations gradually deepen that dependency.
As long as everything works, the cost remains largely invisible. But when these services come under pressure, the extent of that dependency becomes clear. Vulnerability is therefore not accidental, but a logical consequence of how organizations have structured their digitalization.
Collaboration as a Foundation, Direction as a Prerequisite for Impact
The breakout session on crisis management and supply chain resilience, led by Suzanne Nederlof of nlmtd and Jaap Wijnands of V&R, focused on the impact of a well-structured crisis organization and its effects across the chain.
In the Netherlands, there is a strong reliance on collaboration. Short lines of communication enable quick coordination, and there is an underlying belief that solutions will emerge collectively. However, in crisis situations this proves less straightforward. Who decides what happens when things go wrong? What is the actual scope of the chain? Is this defined in advance, or does clarity only emerge when needed? The combination of planning and practice is essential for effective preparedness.
In practice, these questions too often remain unanswered. Particularly across organizational boundaries, there is a lack of clarity around roles and authority. This leads to delays and confusion precisely when speed is critical.
Collaboration remains essential, but without clear direction it does not guarantee effective action.
Dependency Is Not a Given, but a Choice
In the breakout session on digital sovereignty and AI, led by Willem Koeman of nlmtd and Ocean Conijn of BIT, many organizations recognized their dependence on technology and acknowledged the need for change. At the same time, this dependency is deeply intertwined with the convenience these technologies provide. This tension makes it difficult to feel urgency and take action.
Gradually, the conversation shifted from dependency to governance. The central question was no longer where systems are hosted or who provides them, but whether organizations are still capable of shaping their own digital future.
This brought more fundamental questions to the forefront: which values underpin these choices? Who determines how technology is used, and for what purpose? And how much influence do we want to retain ourselves?
As long as these questions remain unanswered, organizations will continue to react rather than lead, watching as their digital future is shaped elsewhere.
Actionable Perspective as the Basis for Citizen Resilience
During the final breakout session, led by Tessa Griffioen of nlmtd, we explored how design choices can contribute to stronger citizen resilience.
Central to this was the concept of human agency: the ability to take and sustain action. A lack of actionable perspective, whether in crisis situations or in today’s complex public services, reduces this capacity. The result is passivity or, conversely, recklessness.
It resembles a ship at sea: citizens have become passengers, while resilience requires them to be part of the crew. To achieve this, they must not only know that a storm may come, but also understand their role when it does.
Resilience is therefore fundamentally a design challenge: how do we make it possible for citizens to act under pressure, and how do we enable and motivate them to do so?
Resilient in a Changing Environment
Across all discussions, there was a clear need to make the concept of resilience more tangible. While nearly every organization recognizes its importance, it often remains unclear where resilience belongs in practice. Is it the responsibility of the CIO, the security department, or the executive board? Does it concern crisis management, business continuity, cybersecurity, or supply chain collaboration?
These questions illustrate that resilience is not a standalone theme, but an organizational challenge. It touches strategy, operations, technology, and leadership. Perhaps most importantly, it extends beyond the boundaries of any single organization. Contributions from speakers and discussions at the tables made it clear that societal challenges, digital infrastructure, and public services are increasingly interconnected. The resilience of one organization is therefore partly determined by the preparedness of partners, suppliers, and others in the chain. This calls for new forms of collaboration, joint preparation, and open discussion of dependencies that often only become visible during disruption.
At the same time, attention to resilience is increasing through legislation and regulation. With the introduction of the Critical Entities Resilience Act, organizations are being more explicitly encouraged to map risks, analyze dependencies, and take measures to safeguard essential processes. Resilience is thus becoming less of a voluntary ambition and more of a structural element of responsible governance and organization.
The central conclusion of the afternoon may have been that resilience is not a project with an end date. It is an ongoing capability to anticipate, collaborate, learn, and adapt in a constantly changing environment. Organizations that invest in this not only strengthen their ability to absorb shocks but also enhance their effectiveness in day-to-day operations.
For many organizations, this journey begins with a simple question: how resilient are we, both as an organization and as part of a broader ecosystem?
