Nolemmings' Data Strategy for the City of Eindhoven
The City of Eindhoven is a fast-growing, innovative municipality at the heart of the Brainport region. Its ambitions are high: creating a livable, sustainable, inclusive and economically strong city supported by modern digital services. Data plays a crucial role in this mission, from mobility and climate to welfare, safety, spatial development and smart city applications. In this dynamic context, Eindhoven aimed to accelerate its transition toward data-driven governance and operations, supported by a clear strategy, governance model and architectural foundation.
Challenge
Eindhoven wanted to accelerate its move toward data-driven working but was hindered by fragmented information provision, a complex IT and application landscape, and a lack of clarity around data ownership, definitions and reuse. Outdated processes and the absence of end-to-end data oversight limited agility and increasingly led to errors, delays and unplanned incidents.
Meanwhile, IoT deployments, smart city initiatives and cross-organizational collaborations were expanding faster than the data frameworks required to support them. At the same time, requirements related to privacy, ethics, AI and transparency became more demanding. The municipality therefore needed a compact yet future-proof data strategy that could bring together leadership, policy, operations and IT.
Approach
Nolemmings worked in three iterative sprints, with intensive review rounds involving the CIO, the CIO Office, policy leads, department heads, data experts and privacy and ethics specialists. We mapped the data landscape, ongoing projects and key risks, and used these insights to design a data strategy built on three pillars: strategic direction and principles for data-driven working, clear data governance with roles and ownership, and a data architecture with frameworks for data flows and integrations.
We defined core data principles such as treating data as a strategic asset that is accessible, authentic and well-controlled. We also designed three implementation scenarios, enabling the municipality to scale execution flexibly. The result was a concise strategy that clearly links long-term vision to concrete next steps. It was subsequently reviewed by the Data Protection Officer and Ethics Committee and formally approved by executive leadership.
Result and impact
The data strategy now forms the substantive and administrative foundation for Eindhoven’s digital and societal ambitions. Governance structures are clearly defined, data principles are applied across the organization and the strategy provides direction for a future-proof data and application landscape. Eindhoven now has stronger control over its data, reduced operational risks and greater agility in decision-making and execution. The broad involvement throughout the process created strong commitment among departments, strategists, architects and leadership.
Further development
The strategy now serves as the starting point for the sunbeam roadmap, the IoT and sensor strategy, AI ethics and algorithmic transparency, data-driven area-based working, open data initiatives and the strengthening of data literacy and the internal data function.
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