EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Dutch rural municipality Ten Boer purchases municipal services from City of Groningen

Dutch rural municipality Ten Boer purchases municipal services from City of Groningen

Introduction

While discussing the 2003 budget, the city council of the Dutch rural municipality Ten Boer, concluded that it would be difficult for the municipality to fulfil all of its tasks adequately in the future. As a result of decentralisation, the municipality consisting of around 7000 inhabitants, was getting more responsibilities, but the financial resources to effectively manage them were lacking. The local council then decided to intensively cooperate with the city of Groningen in a way that had never been done before…

Problem

Decentralisation is an important phenomenon in The Netherlands. As a result, the pressure on financial and human resources of small municipalities sometimes becomes too heavy. The rural municipality of Ten Boer situated in the Northern province of Groningen, faced with this pheonomenon, therefore had to find an innovative way to solve its decreasing efficiency.

Description

The collaboration between the municipality of Ten Boer and the City of Groningen, is based on intensive cooperation and the outsourcing of municipal tasks. Ten Boer outsourced many of its tasks and transferred 90 percent of its officials to Groningen.
Ten Boer is still an independent municipality and remains responsible for the formation of policy, but it established a contract with the city of Groningen and purchases the required municipal services from that larger municipality.
A small organisation in Ten Boer now focuses on the strategic development of policies and the management of the process. Apart from that there is still a front office in Ten Boer where basic municipal services are provided such as passports, driving licenses and permits.
By applying this method, the independence and identity of Ten Boer are maintained while the efficiency of the municipality is promoted.

Results

The contract between the municipality of Ten Boer and Groningen started on 1 January 2007. Nearly one year later the results are very satisfactory according to a Ten Boer official. The municipality mainly focused on direct services for inhabitants at first, but as this seems to be going well, it is now looking at the political side of governing the municipality. Generally people are enthusiastic about the cooperation between the two municipalities and willing to invest.

Recently an evaluation was presented to the Ten Boer local council. The cooperation between Ten Boer and the City of Groningen will definitely continue. The improvement of the accessibility of the municipal services, contact with the inhabitants and the strengthening of the identity of Ten Boer were said to be important elements to be addressed in the near future.

The cooperation between Ten Boer and Groningen has also been noticed abroad. The outsourcing model was presented to an international audience in Dubai.

Contact info

Ten Boer Municipality
gemeente@tenboer.nl

Project start date

//2002

Links

Visit the Ten Boer Municipality website Visit the Groningen Municipality website

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy

Keywords

Institutional characteristics
Local Authority