Don't be offended! Digitalization only makes poldering fairer

This column is the author's response to the comments. Many people recognize the problems. 'But there is also a small but vocal group that confuses my role with the problem,' Pim van Meer states. But this is not about Pim, it is about digitization in the polder.

Pim's digital maze is a ridiculously bad name.
As if it's about me. While everything I am trying to do is about the opposite: less Pim needed, more collective clarity. Less magic in closed rooms, more explainability out in the open.

And yet reactions to Digital Mazes are remarkably often about me. About tone, style, pictures, sharp edges. While in essence I am doing only one thing: speaking out loud what the Dutch themselves always say we want.

Just act normal. Polder. Out together, home together.

The Dutch are not fanatical about 'just act normal' because it's such a cozy phrase. It's our social operating system. It maintains equality, predictability and group peace. Heads about even, passion a little low. In a small, populous country, that's not surprising: social friction is expensive.

But that also makes anything that has a little too much "show" immediately suspect. Whoever sticks his head above the ground gets wind first. Not because the content is necessarily bad, but because we are used to outliers often being mainly concerned with themselves.

Polderization is the flip side of that.
You solve it together, or you drown together. That is literally our country. Dikes, polders, rivers: if one idiot anywhere pushes his own right, everyone is wet. That's deep in our political and administrative reflexes: coalitions, compromise, "we have to work it out together."

In such a culture, we don't like heroes who come and fix it. We like people who take the group with them.

And so that is where Pim's digital maze uncomfortably chafes.

Because what am I doing lately?
I walk through the chain and name pain points. Not to burn anyone down, but because without sharpness you don't get learning ability. I defend the flag-bearers - the people who have been doing good work for years, often under the radar. I've been saying for ages: if we do it right, I'll soon be needed less. The Digital Mazes should be less and less "Pim" and more and more "system."

But as soon as you make that visible - 3D models, objectively verifiable goals, transparency about information needs, rhythm in decision-making - some people feel as if you are the threat.

Because if you use digitalization in such a way that it makes poldering fairer, then everyone becomes just a little more visible:
What your goal really is, what choices you make, what concessions you ask of others.

And that is exactly the point where Dutch sobriety can go both ways:

One side says:
Fine, finally clarity, we can polder more honestly.

The other side whispers:
exciting, soon they will see exactly what ím doing (or not doing).

In the responses to Pim's digital maze, I see both.
Lots of people recognize the problems, are glad they are being made explicit, send examples, want to think along.
But there is also a small but noisy group that confuses my role with the problem. Who says:
you are too sharp,
You are threatening my profession,
You make it too transparent,
You put me down as old-fashioned.

While in practice I am doing exactly what we as a country say we find important:
Egalitarian: no secret knowledge, but explainable rules of the game.
Polder: one model, one source of truth, in which everyone has their place.
Sober: no heroic innovation myths, but simply: what works, what doesn't, what does it cost, what does it deliver.

The joke - or the tragedy - is that people pretend I am the show, when in fact I am trying to need the show to make this uncomfortable truth bearable. I know why we've been doing it the way we've been doing it for years, but it's not good enough anymore. Not because I say so, but because we hear this every day on the news.

If I bring digitalization in, it is not to stroke the ego of the tech, but to make polder fairer. When I advocate for objectively testable quality, it is not to unmask anyone, but to make the conversation less personal and less arbitrary. When I say that transparency and learning are the greatest good, that is not an attack on people - it is an attack on fog.

And fog is exactly where nepotism, suspicion and mistrust thrive.

You could say: Pim's digital maze is not the problem, but a symptom. A temporary role in a system that still has to learn to deal with its own ambitions: wanting to build quickly, high quality, low housing costs, real sustainability, social impact - and meanwhile not wanting to seriously change anyone.

Filing moment

This column is my response to the comments.
The positive: people who say they feel seen, that they finally have words for what has been teetering for years.
And the defensive ones: people who experience naming those same pain points as personal attacks, threats to their role or disruption of "sociability."

I am not the hero, not the enemy, and certainly not the focal point. I am just the one who says things out loud, grabs the data and suggests how to make it smarter together. Exactly the kind of sobriety and poldering that we in the Netherlands are so fond of displaying.

If you find that annoying, the question is not whether Pim demands too much attention.
The question is whether sometimes we don't prefer to shout 'just act normal', just to avoid seeing that normal has long since ceased to be good enough.