Building a Smarter, Faster City—One App at a Time
The City of Rotterdam, known for its forward-thinking infrastructure and smart urban planning, found itself facing a digital dilemma shared by many public organizations: how do you meet rising citizen expectations and operational complexity, without slowing down?
With an ambitious goal to digitize public services efficiently and securely, Rotterdam turned to Mendix Low-Code platform to bridge the gap between business demands and IT capacity. And the results? Over 100 live applications, 100,000+ users served, and a development culture that’s faster, smarter, and more connected than ever.
“The main focus was that we wanted to bring speed into our development,” said Erik van der Steen, Rapid Application Development Advisor at the City of Rotterdam.
The Challenge: Demand Was High. Speed Was Not.
City officials and departments had hundreds of requests for tools, portals, and systems that would make public services more efficient and accessible. But traditional development cycles couldn’t keep up, and IT teams were stretched thin.
Some key hurdles:
- Reliance on spreadsheets and manual processing for high-value functions like subsidy management
- Disjointed systems across departments
- Slow go-to-market timelines for internal and citizen-facing applications
- A gap between what the business teams needed and what IT could deliver
CIO Mark Vermeer described their bottleneck plainly:
“What Mendix gave us was a fast track for development of the smaller demands, or the things that can be done in an agile way with rapid prototyping.”
The Solution: A Mendix Low-Code Strategy to Start, Structure, and Scale
Rotterdam followed Mendix’s proven “Start, Structure, Scale” approach. The team began with small, high-impact projects to show value quickly, structured their development pipeline for consistency, and then scaled with confidence.
They adopted agile methodologies across teams, creating tight feedback loops between business and IT. With Mendix’s visual development environment, domain experts were able to collaborate directly with developers—reducing handovers and accelerating delivery.
✨ Key Stats:
- Over 100,000 users supported across internal and public platforms
- 100+ apps delivered in under 4 years
- 8–12 weeks development time per app
Smart, Targeted Innovation—With Real Impact
Rotterdam’s Mendix journey resulted in a wide range of impactful apps. Here are a few standout examples:
🟢 ISA (Incoming Subsidy Administration)
Previously managed in spreadsheets, ISA now processes over €1 billion annually in subsidies through a centralized, auditable digital system, streamlining one of the city’s most critical financial processes.
🟡 RBP (Citizen Visitor Parking)
This citizen-facing mobile app allows residents to reserve guest parking spots quickly and easily—reducing admin overhead and improving daily convenience for users.
🔵 trashR
By digitizing waste collection scheduling for businesses, Rotterdam not only simplified a frustrating task but also saved an estimated €80,000 per year in operational costs.
🟣 Digital Counter
Developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this application enabled citizens to engage with city departments through video meetings from their phone or desktop, eliminating the need for in-person visits. It has since become a permanent, scalable channel for citizen engagement, boosting accessibility and efficiency long after lockdowns ended.
Collaboration Is the Culture Now
With Mendix Low-Code Platform, Rotterdam didn’t just speed up development—they changed how their teams work.
“We were able to build up our team, our development culture, and we found that it wasn’t only IT who wanted to develop applications,” said van der Steen. “We saw other departments thinking: ‘Hey, if that’s possible, I want that too.’”
That collaborative ripple effect helped the city scale rapidly, with a growing number of developers and product owners using low-code to solve problems faster, with fewer technical blockers.
Mendix Low-Code as a Strategic Asset
CIO Vermeer noted that Mendix didn’t just enable one-off solutions—it became a key part of their digital infrastructure:
“It’s not just about building apps. It’s about enabling the organization to move faster and act on new ideas when they happen.”
By freeing IT teams from minor requests and enabling departments to co-create their own tools, Rotterdam made innovation sustainable, not just fast.
Conclusion: A Smarter Public Sector Starts Here
Rotterdam’s journey shows what’s possible when the right platform meets a forward-thinking mindset. With Mendix low-code, they’ve turned a development bottleneck into a digital advantage—and created a model that any public-sector organization can learn from.
And this is just the beginning.
📖 Want to dive deeper? Read the full case study on Mendix.com
👉 The City of Rotterdam Empowers Development at Scale
📩 Let’s talk about how DigiTaiken and Mendix can bring this same transformation to your city or organization