Every year around Christmas, we take stock of WooGLe's growth. And once again, the most recent numbers are remarkable: WooGLe has doubled in size, now indexing over 8 million documents across more than 90,000 dossiers from nearly 800 government bodies! Maarten Marx has written an extensive blog about this on Wooverheid (Dutch). Read the summary below!
WooGLe's document count has doubled each year since launch
This week we met at the Rijksorganisatie voor Informatiehuishouding (RvIHH) in The Hague for the ICAI OpenGov Lab Governing Board meeting. With GB members Marion Hermans-Koelemij (RvIHH) and Peter van der Donk (Universiteit van Amsterdam) we discussed progress, collaboration, and plans for the coming year.
We hosted colleagues from the AI Lab voor de Publieke Diensten (Utrecht University) at LAB42 UvA for a joint PhD meetup.
David Graus kicked off with an overview of the ICAI OpenGov Lab, followed by Maik Larooij and Lisa Winters, who presented their first projects and work packages. Iris Beerepoot, lab coordinator of the AI Lab voor de Publieke Diensten, then gave a helicopter overview of the Utrecht lab, their focus areas and stakeholders. Throughout the session, Guido Ongena (Hogeschool Utrecht) contributed thoughtful reflections from an information management perspective.
We’re proud to share that Barbora Wenzlová has won the Victorine van Schaick Prize 2025, awarded by the Victorine van Schaick Fund, for her Cultural Data & AI master thesis, written under supervision of Jaap Kamps at the ICAI OpenGov Lab.
Barbora received the award at the annual conference of the KNVI (Koninklijke Nederlandse Vereniging van Informatieprofessionals) in Ermelo on November 6, where she presented her research to an audience of information professionals focused on responsible and transparent digital transformation.
On Friday, October 31st, and Saterday, November 1st, the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and the program Open Government (Programma Open Overheid) organised a hackaton to improve the internal process of responding to Woo-requests. David, Damiaan, Maik and Jos (PhD student @ Utrecht University) represented the OpenGov Lab as one of the ten teams that participated in the event!
The team, very focused, at work while the time was running out
On Friday, October 17th, a delegation (David, Jaap, Damiaan & Maik) of the ICAI OpenGov Lab was present at the UvA (AI) Thesis Fair to talk to prospective thesis students!
David & Maik in action, accompanied by our newly designed OpenGov banners!
Congratulations to Floris Bos (not pictured), whose Computer Science MSc thesis "Linking References to Documents in Parliamentary Debates" won the Best Short Paper Award at The 29th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL2025) in Tampere, Finland!
Maarten Marx (left) with the Best Short Paper Award for Floris' paper at TPDL2025
We’re very happy to welcome Maik Larooij to the ICAI OpenGov Lab! This week he started as the lab’s fourth dual PhD student, combining his role as consultant at the Rijksorganisatie voor Informatiehuishouding with pursuing a PhD at the University of Amsterdam. Maik will be supervised by David Graus (co-promotor), alongside Maarten Marx (co-promotor) and Jaap Kamps (promotor).
Maarten Marx, Maik Larooij, and David Graus in the OpenGov Lab
Yesterday, the ICAI OpenGov Lab had its official kick-off at LAB42 UvA at Science Park in Amsterdam! The lab's Dual PhD candidates Damiaan Reijnaers, Lisa Winters, and Patricia Moeskops presented their research plans to the lab and partners from Rijksorganisatie voor Informatiehuishouding (RvIHH) and I-Partnerschap!
Lisa Winters, Erna Ruijer, Jaap Kamps, Paul van den Akker, Marion Hermans-Koelemij, Peter van der Donk, Patricia Panhuis, Patricia Moeskops, Damiaan Reijnaers, Sander Verhoeckx, and David Graus in front of LAB42