Nieuwland: a blueprint for the digital rule of law

It’s finally here. Nieuwland: A Design for the Digital Rule of Law has been presented. I am genuinely proud and grateful to have been part of this.

What draws me in — and keeps re-energising me about this booklet — is what it actually does: it acknowledges the existing problems and acknowledges our values, forged together in a way that makes it possible to actually solve them. No wallowing, no naive optimism, but a positive ideal of how digitalisation could strengthen the rule of law rather than erode it. That’s exactly the kind of work I want to be involved in.

Nieuwland grew out of the Denktank Achterkant van de Overheid — the Think Tank on the Backend of Government. Together with Arjan Widlak, Timen Olthof, Mariette Lokin, Daan de Koning, Ronald Damhof and Eelco Hotting, we spent a year thinking, writing, debating and refining. Four pillars are at the heart of it:

• Nieuwlands organising — how government restructures its tasks
• Nieuwlands registering — how data is recorded in a trustworthy way
• Nieuwlands designing — how systems and processes are shaped
• Nieuwlands norming — how legislation guides the digital government

On 11 February 2026, the publication was presented for the first time to members of the Dutch Parliament. Not as an academic exercise, but as a real contribution to a real debate. That felt significant.

My part: chapter 5

My specific contribution is chapter 5: Nieuwlands registering. It’s about recording legal status over time — a topic I’ve been preoccupied with for years, and something I’ve been developing through Protocol Denken. How do you know what was legally in force at a given moment? How do you record that in a way that remains interpretable and queryable later?

I developed that thinking further in Chronolexografie — a conceptual model for exactly this question. And it’s already gaining traction: the work is being taken forward in the project Uit betrouwbare bron (From a reliable source), which I’m also part of. That gives me real energy.

A dream

I genuinely hope — and I mean that seriously — that the ideas in Nieuwland eventually make their way into the manifestos of every political party. Not as a vague promise, but as a concrete direction. This is the work I want to contribute to.

The publication is released by BoomBestuurskunde under a CC BY 4.0 licence. Free to read, free to share: achterkantvandeoverheid.nl/avdo/ontwerp. After summer, a physical copy will also be available to order from Boom.