Amsterdam Metropolitan Region

The Amsterdam Region is the most important economic motor of The Netherlands and home to a wide diversity of businesses, good infrastructure by land, air and water, and excellent digital connectivity.

The Amsterdam Region strives to be an internationally competitive region, with compact cities, a landscape that is attractive, as well as a well-functioning infrastructural network that interconnects the residential cores and connects them with the countryside and the rest of the world.

Within the Amsterdam Region, there is a focus on collaboration between governmental authorities, the business community, social organisations, knowledge institutions, social entrepreneurs and residents. Amsterdam Economic Board is a key organization that facilitates innovation in the Amsterdam Region with a focus on “triple helix” collaboration between companies, knowledge institutions and governments. The focus of the Board is on accelerating the circular, energy and digital transitions in the Amsterdam Region through this triple helix collaboration.

Amsterdam Economic Board works to facilitate the transition to a responsible digital society by building a system through which organizations deal with technology in a responsible manner and take advantage of the opportunities that technology offers to make the region smarter, greener and healthier.

Amsterdam Economic Board aims to position the Amsterdam Region as one of the most important places in Europe for data-driven innovation by 2025. The region wants to be an international leader in terms of the digital infrastructure available, the ability to build innovative data-driven applications on it, and confidence in the digital society. The Amsterdam Region (and the Netherlands) is already a global leader in the digitization of the economy and society. The Amsterdam Region aims to specialize in ‘bottom-up’ driven digital trust, through empowerment of residents.

Some recent and ongoing projects and policies related to digitalization in Amsterdam and the region include:

• Amsterdam Digital City Agenda – the City of Amsterdam has drawn an agenda to keep a grip on digitization, with a focus on achieving a free, inclusive and creative digital city.
• Tada Manifesto for responsible digitalization
• AMDEX (Amsterdam Data Exchange) — aims to create neutral (infrastructure and rules) facilities, operating in the background and allowing for controlled, trusted and secure data transactions
• LEAP (Lower Energy Acceleration Program) – exploits the energy-saving potential of ICT within data centers and thus accelerates the pace towards the sustainable digital economy
• Openresearch.amsterdam – is a digital platform for research, knowledge and innovation about Amsterdam and the metropolitan region. The purpose of the platform is to share knowledge, make relationships visible, and collaborate on research. Projects and policies related do digitalization can be found under “Digital” dossier.