The final Brightlands Business Club event of 2022 was held at the CBS headquarters in Heerlen.
First, Rob van Kan (CBS director of dataservice, research & innovation and branch manager) gave us insights into how this modern office building is anchored to the history of the area and the exact location. Southern Limburg was a hotspot for coal mining in the 1930’s to 1970’s. The building derives its high level of sustainability because the climate system is powered by the energy in the water from the (now closed) coal mines. In the center of the building, the large glass column marks the exact location where the lift-shaft was, that took the coalworkers down way below ground level.
The CBS employs over 2000 people and produces many statistics in over 600 projects per year. The online statistics database of the CBS is called Statline and provides over 5000 tables and more than 13 billion cells full of statistic information. This huge amount of data is to a large extent a result of the special CBS law that the Netherlands has – but more on that later.
While the labor market in the Netherlands is very tight, CBS Heerlen has no trouble in attracting new employees. Besides the modern and sustainable office building, CBS Heerlen is (basically) the only large federal government organization in the south of Limburg. So those interested in working for the federal government usually end up at CBS Heerlen. This is in stark contrast with the situation of the other mail CBS headquarter in The Hague, where job seekers have all sorts of government departments and organizations to choose from.
After his introduction, focus shifted to the Business Portal that CBS is developing, and the background that has led up to its development. Leanne Houben gave us some background on the direction the CBS has taken, to make sure that the regulatory burden on businesses remains manageable and that something is ‘given back’ to all the organizations that supply data. The ‘CBS law’ is a determining factor in gaining the data. In essence, the CBS law obliges any Dutch organization that is formally asked by CBS to supply their relevant economic data. For some of the younger and smaller companies within our business club, this was new information.
Sometimes, sensitive business information such as raw materials purchase prices and effective sales prices of manufactured products is asked for. Our very own chairman Wouter has hands-on experience with this (and the time it costs him every month to supply this info) and joined the interactive discussion. After consultation with CBS, a compromise was reached and Wouter now supplies the ‘delta’ figures with regards to pricing and sales, but not the absolute prices or sales numbers, which makes it more agreeable to him.
Noël Mingels (CBS Business Portal product owner) displayed the Business Portal of CBS that is in development. He was very happy with the amount of interactivity and the honest, uncensored feedback he received from our members, regarding how the CBS requests for data are currently ‘experienced’ by businesses. The Business Portal is scheduled to be launched at the end of January 2023. It will give organizations a personalized starting area with an easy starting position displaying relevant statistical insight into how their own sector is doing. It allows businesses to compare their own business performance with the average of their (anonymized) sector counterparts.
Noël explained that the CBS development team would love to interact with business club members as the eventual end-users, to have interactive sessions and evaluate whether they are building the right things. He invited the Business Club members to contact him to form a panel and give feedback and insights.
After the break, Charles Groenhuijsen took us on a tour of his distinguished career as journalist, predominantly as reporter in Paris and in the United States, for the “NOS Journaal”. Charles commented on a range of politically famous figures such as Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Donald Trump, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, Barack Obama and also Barack Obama. Charles was physically situated to the left of the chairmain, but politically situated to everyone’s left, or so it seemed. It was indeed too easy to spot Charles’ political color preference. Other surprises were his data-founded revelation that women will soon be taking part seriously in the world business and political scene. It made some speculate whether he had successfully time-traveled from the 1970’s as he drew some raised eyebrows on this subject. But perhaps most importantly, we saw and experienced a presentation of a proud man, being rightfully proud of his career in journalism. He showed us many photographs from his personal archives, with all sorts of (political) celebrities and world leaders, illustrating his grandeur as the best know face of Dutch international political reporting.
With the content program going way past the expected deadline, and Charles informing us – to our surprise – that he would not join us for dinner, we went to nearby Kasteel Terworm and straight to the dinner table for a three-course dinner of high quality. The charming small castle Terworm goes back to the 15th century and has been meticulously restored in various phases, lastly about 2,5 decades ago. We enjoyed our own private dining room there with a very long table.
During the dinner, our chairman Wouter took the floor to say goodbye and thank and honor two very precious business club members. Firstly, Emiel Staring formally reached the retirement age (does an entrepreneur ever retire though?) and is handing over the reins to his businesses. Secondly, we said goodbye to Astrid Verberne, who is leaving the Brightlands organization to become director of the Maastricht center management foundation. The support in the beginning that Astrid channeled towards the business club to get going has been crucial. We will miss her style, sharpness and humor intensely.
We look back at an enjoyable event with the invitation to form a panel to give feedback on (and thus influence the direction of) the CBS Business Portal. The presentation of Charles Groenhuijsen gave a nice insight into the career highlights of a well-known presenter that most of us ‘grew up with’.
The presentations of all the speakers have been uploaded and are available through the BBC website. Regarding the presentation of Charles, due to copyright restrictions, we ask you to only use this for personal reference, in a personal setting.
