LegalTech DSS

UPDATE IN PROGRESS…

THE CHALLENGE

Public services exist to help people through important moments in life. But for many citizens, these systems are confusing, inconsistent, and hard to trust. A person may receive different information from different parts of the same institution. A rule on a website may not match what happens in practice. Decisions can feel arbitrary, and the reasoning behind them is rarely visible.

These problems are not caused by one person or one department. As laws move through policies, digital tools, and teams, they get interpreted and applied in different ways. Over time, what the legislation says, what staff are told to do, and what citizens actually experience can pull apart. The consequences go beyond administrative inconvenience. When public systems become hard to follow, trust erodes. Citizens feel unheard. Public workers face pressure to navigate processes that were not designed to fit together.

This is not a new challenge. In 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals identified transparent, accountable public institutions as a global priority through SDG 16. Yet in Amsterdam, as in many cities, fragmentation in public service delivery remains a persistent and largely unsolved problem.

This project starts from one belief: Public services should be understandable, transparent, and consistent for everyone involved.

Using Amsterdam’s social benefit process as a case study, this project explores how the translation of laws into public service delivery can be made more transparent, traceable, and coherent across departments and systems.