Dear Alexander De Croo,

Congratulations on becoming the prime minister of Belgium. We welcome your new government and we are positively pleased to see that you are bringing a new level of diversity, something that we hold dear in our community.

However, we are surprised to see that digital is once again an afterthought that doesn’t have its own ministry and that is relegated in a mixed bag along with “public building management”.

You had yourself the Digital Agenda as one of your responsibilities in the previous government. You know more than anyone else that this requires the full attention.

We are in 2020 and digital is everywhere. 7.5 millions of Belgians are on Facebook. 76% of Belgians use online banking, … to only share a few stats.

More importantly, we have seen with the COVID-19 crisis how important digital has become. Not only to track the virus but also to be able to continue the education of our kids online, to be able to work remotely, etc. We are also seeing the negative impact of social media on the division of our society, the rise of extremism because of it and the addiction it can create.

This is too important not to give the digital world the attention it deserves for the well being of all residents of Belgium.

We would be wise to learn from Taiwan, one of the countries that has handled the COVID-19 crisis the best, despite a population density twice as big as Belgium (only 7 deaths for a population of 24M compared to more than 10,000 to date in Belgium). They appointed back in 2016 Audrey Tang, a 35 year old person from the local civic hacking community. Since then they laid the foundation for a much more participative digital environment with open data, broadband access as a human right, more accessible government services online, etc.

We would be more than happy to help you find the best candidate for such a role and collaborate with that person to make sure Belgium is best equipped to face those big challenges.