Case Study: Rotterdam.nl achieves rapid digitization of citizen relief and reliable COVID-19 data reporting with Mendix

The City of Rotterdam Digitizes Citizen Experiences to Deliver Relief

The City of Rotterdam’s low-code Rapid App Development (RAD) team, led by Erik van der Steen, faced an urgent COVID-19 challenge: serve over 600,000 citizens while quickly digitizing slow, error-prone manual processes. Two priorities emerged—helping self‑employed residents access emergency benefits and giving the Municipal Health Service (GGD) a flexible way to register patients, tests and outcomes—tasks hampered by paper forms, scanned documents and inconsistent Excel spreadsheets.

The team and partners built fast, practical apps: the RBZ Portal digitized benefit applications (integrated with national ID and autofill) and went public in under two weeks, handling tens of thousands of requests; a GGD tracking app was delivered in about nine days (120 developer hours) and iterated daily to add fields and reports. Results included faster, more consistent and trustworthy data for decision-makers, praise from the mayor, improved service for entrepreneurs and replication guidance for other municipalities.

Rotterdam.nl

Erik van der Steen

RAD Advisor