F2: F., researcher barca
Working with the public sector: They change more often and are less dedicated—not for personal
reasons, but because as public functionaries they have multiple roles and limited
freedom to choose what they work on.
F3: M., Digi
A common frustration is that this work is always on top of people’s regular jobs. Some get dedicated time from their organization, others don’t — and that creates unequal commitment. How much freedom people have varies more by team than by organization type; it’s rarely bad intent, just a matter of pressure and priorities. In government, even attending a session can require approval, while in companies that’s rarely an issue.
Beyond capacity, people sometimes speak different “languages” or have strong, long-held opinions — which creates friction, though it can also be productive. And a frustration shared by many is: when do we stop talking and actually take steps? Though what counts as “action” means different things to different people.
F4: M., Digi-ICTU
Personnel turnover was a challenge — nearly every organization had changes throughout the three years, making continuity difficult. I was one of the few who was there from start to finish. The biggest pain point overall is understanding each other, especially across disciplines. The word “innovation” alone means something different to everyone.
F5: A., PBA
A key pain point is language: innovators can be so deep in their subject that it becomes hard for potential partners to engage. Another is that entrepreneurs naturally want to move fast and independently, which is fundamentally at odds with the pace and shared ownership that partnerships require. And in certain contexts — like working with governments or the UN — procurement rules add another layer of complexity, requiring creative solutions just to enable the right conversations.
F6: A., Signalen - VNG
Participation in votes and polls is around a quarter of municipalities, which isn’t bad but could be better. Turnover within municipalities makes consistent engagement a challenge. I try to keep everything as transparent and accessible as possible — sharing agendas, summaries, and outcomes in Teams so that even those who weren’t present can follow along. Staff turnover within municipalities is an ongoing challenge. People change roles or leave, and there isn’t always a good handover. We try to ask departing contacts to add their successor, but a proper onboarding process for new community members doesn’t really exist yet, even though there’s quite a lot to get up to speed on.
F7: L., PBA
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Too much pressure on reporting numbers > partners feel as if ‘how’ or ‘what’ they’re doing is not important.
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Concerns about security of direct messaging platforms + you cannot close out access to all (prior) documents etc in a whatsapp group if someone is not part of the collaboration anymore and is deleted from the group.
F8: A.
The biggest frustration is that all this work — involving hundreds of people and organisations — simply disappears when a project ends. It lives on a hard drive somewhere, and that’s it. A platform could change that in three ways: by keeping pressure on for continuity, by keeping people connected so something new can evolve, and by serving as a permanent record — not a blueprint, but proof that it happened, who was involved, and what was built.
F9: J., Novum
First, there is the risk of working with the wrong people or at the wrong organizational level — experience has shown that when people cannot move forward elsewhere, they sometimes seek out new entry points, which can lead the team to take on a challenge that has already failed multiple times without being aware of this. Second, knowledge retention is a recurring challenge: when team members leave or lessons are not properly documented, valuable experience is lost. Third, building solutions with the wrong team — where Novum itself builds rather than the people who will eventually own and maintain the solution — has historically led to low adoption, reinforcing their principle of building as little as possible themselves.