Biography
Barbara Van Den Haute is head of ‘Digitaal Vlaanderen’, the government agency responsible for all things digital in the region of Flanders. Digitaal Vlaanderen has a staff of 640 people and offers local and regional governments in Flanders proven solutions and expertise to enhance their digital transformation.
Barbara leads the government to an organization powered by data, and with state-of-the-art, low touch government services. For example, data services of Digitaal Vlaanderen enable the government to automatically grant families with their “groeipakket”, a premium for families with children. E-commerce platforms such as Bol.com use Digitaal Vlaanderen services to have the most recent address data to be able to deliver packages to the correct addresses in Flanders.
Digitaal Vlaanderen is best known for their end user solutions like Mijn Burgerprofiel (My Citizen Profile) and the recent app CovidSafe.
As part of the Flemish resilience program, Barbara is responsible to follow up on all digital resilience projects. This includes the start-up of the Flemish Data Utility Company, a new and neutral organization that wants to boost the economy by making data more findable and exchangeable, and by building bridges of trust between citizens, companies and associations.
Apart from her job at the Flemish government, Barbara is chairman of NXTPort, the data company and innovation hub of the Port of Antwerp.
Barbara is a public speaker on subject matters digital transformation, the power of data and how governments can operate as a platform.