1. Spotting dinosaurs
in government
Harum quatur aut hiliscid eum fugit ex-
cere simusdae
Create a
swarm of
happiness
Itasi cus, quiae quo es-
tru
The movement of
the Dinobusters!
Bis aristo con poritas diorent optiatum
rem fugit
Et quodi to beatius minullore estest
utemque eiustest
Magazine
Dinobusters!Dinobusters!

3. From the
editors
Bye bye,
Dinosaurs in
government…
We are Elke Wambacq, Nancy De Vogelaere and Joke
Renneboog. Three cicil servants working everyday in
government. We wrote the book “Tot uw dienst” telling the
story of the future of Belgian government. Our dream is
making citizens and customers proud of their government. We
collected stories and interesting facts about government
illustrating how we can build the government of our dreams.
Do you know the difference between citizens and customers?
They are in fact the same, but citizens have rights and
obligations. Customers are getting services from government.
If you would like to put the citizens and customers of
government back in the center, we have to get rid of
„dinosaurs”. Dinosaurs are outdated habits.
You know, like printing a lot of documents in a digital world or
sending your customer in the maze of bureaucracy.
This magazine is a summary of our book. Because our book is
written in Flemish and almost no one in the world understands
this language, we translated the highlights of our book in English.
We make a diagnosis of government today and show how we all
can make it more flexible and innovative tomorrow.
Bye, bye dinosaurs in government…
Elke Wambacq
Joke Renneboog
Nancy De Vogelaere
3

4. “C’est le temps que
tu as perdu pour ta
rose qui fait ta rose
si importante”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -Le Petit Prince

5. 01. Spotting dinosaurs in government
A long time ago government was very modern with its
bureaucratic structure. The French Revolution made government
in Europe more independent from absolute kings and aristocrats.
But in our modern world it is mostly outdated. We call it the
reptile brain of government.
02. Acting like a dinosaur
03. Trapped in a cage
Once a civil servant is working at the government, your contract
is signed in blood. Certain and comfortable in a golden cage civil
servant are muted. How to get out?
04. A meteorite strikes in
05. From dust till swarm
06. The movement of the Dinobusters!
5

6. Spotting
dinosaurs in
government
A long time ago government
was very modern with its bu-
reaucratic structure. The French
Revolution made government in
Europe more independent from
absolute kings and aristocrats.
But in our modern world it is
mostly outdated. We call the
dinosaurs of government.
The word „dinosaur” means „powerful”.
Dinosaurs lived billions of years on
Earth, but despite of their power and
huge shape, they died massively. Di-
nosaurs weren’t able to adapt to their
environment.
Sometimes government is also called a
dinosaur: huge and powerful but unable
to change. Some civil servants think it is
not necessary to change. They worked
for ages in a particular system and gov-
ernment looks like a save harbor pro-
tecting them from the crisis.
At the other side society is calling for
action. Citizens are paying taxes and
are expecting something back. Civil
servants are often seen as a louse.
How can we change that? How can we
make sure that government puts added
value to their services?
It is important to recognize the barriers
for change.
Spotting dinosaurs is spotting the
barriers for change. How can we
recognize those barriers?
It is a way of acting. People sometimes
don’t recognize what they see. Context
is changing all the time. New technolo-
gy for example is creating new oppor-
tunities. You have to be open to what is
happening around you to be able to
see it. In some other cases we see
people not saying what they think. For
example: a new computer system is
implemented in your organization. Peo-
ple say they will work with it. But deep
inside yourself you actually don’t like
the change. You keep on working with
your good old paper list to manage
things. You don’t say what you think.
Another way to recognize barriers is
how people don’t see what they are
doing. A procedure is done for ages, but is
it still efficient? Is it serving needs of soci-
ety?
All the time you have to dare to ask the
right questions. It has become a taboo to
question the way we work, but it can be a
great relief to spot what goes wrong and
do something about it.
What can you do if you have spot-
ted dinosaurs in your organization?
First of all it is important to find people who
think the same. Most of the time a lot of
employers are willing to enhance the way
they work. It is good to talk about it and try
to get the challenge clear. Sometimes you
need to collect some proof with facts and
figures in order to make it a project. It is
also important to give the right example by
yourself. Say what you do, do what you
say, say what you think and see what hap-
pens around you. It are simple rules to
make everything much more easy.
6

7. All the time you have to dare to ask the right questions. It has become a taboo to question the way we
work, but it can be a great relief to spot what goes wrong and actually do something bout it.
Do you know good examples of spot-
ting dinosaurs and doing something
about it?
In the Netherlands we found a very good
example of how you can spot dinosaurs.
They call it „do-tanks”. It means that you
spot a concrete, relevant and actual prob-
lem in society. For example a citizen hav-
ing debts and living on the edge of pover-
ty. A lot of governmental entities are oc-
cupied with the civil servant but at some
point it goes wrong when the different
entities are not communicating well with
each other.
In a do-tank all the stakeholders, including
the civil servants and citizens, are sitting
together to figure out where it went wrong.
When the problem is clear, all stakehold-
ers formulate the best way to solve it.
The purpose is not thinking too much,
but acting very fast. Sometimes you have
to break the law to help the citizen but
maybe you have to. Laws can be
changed too if they became outdated or
inefficient.
This initiative of „do-tanks” was intro-
duced by a network of civil servants
called „Slimmer netwerk” www.slimmer-
netwerk.nl (translated in English: „smarter
network)” and „de kafkabrigade”
www.kafkabrigade.nl .
Another example is using the skills of a
consultant to analyze what is happening
in your organization. Actually the employ-
ers know very well what is going on, but
through time they lost credibility. That is a
shame because we are not using all the
talent at the working floor and at the
same time paying a lot of money to a pri-
vate consultant. We sometimes hire a con-
sultant to give him our watch to say how
late it is.
In Flemish government they launched
„Radar” to give an answer to this chal-
lenge. Radar is an easy marketplace where
everybody can publish jobs and temporary
tasks. Everybody in government can regis-
ter to tell about his or her talent and be a
candidate to fulfill a job. No contracts or
formal papers are needed to start. So it
happens that a civil servant working for
public affairs is making a small movie for an
entity occupied with welfare. Everyone can
temporarily stand by or exchange knowl-
edge in different organizations.

8. Acting like a dinosaur
Can you imagine how it feels to walk
with an egg hidden in your pants? It will
make it difficult for you to walk and you
might not know how to sit, move and
turn around any more.
Governments are dealing with eggs like
this. Not the ones like the egg of
Columbus, but an egg that is
obstructing an easy solution. Still: the
challenges are huge…Financial crisis is
getting closer. Citizens are having more
climbing expectations from their
government. Customers also want to
get their services online, being able to
contact offices after regular closing
time etc.
Government is a big institute. Expecting it to be as flexible
as a small company with only a few employees is maybe
one step too far but it definitely should be more adaptive to
what society needs. Giving government a personality, a
face to talk to so customers will be able to identify
themselves with government.
Politics
The reptile brain government is struggling with, has some-
thing to do with internal politics. In Flemish government for
example more then 70% of top management is politically
appointed.
Off course, the top management has had to succeed throughout
some strong selection assessments. And still, in the end, politics
decide.
Power, influence and control are even in this multilevel organiza-
tion most of the time the way decisions are made. This is in con-
flict with trust, honesty and a customer friendly way of acting.
During the 19th century a bureaucratic environment was a solu-
tion to prevent cronyism. The separation of politics and adminis-
tration is unfortunately not a reality. It is important to face this fact
and to ask the question which procedures are helping civil ser-
vants and which are obstructing a good service. Dare to chal-
lenge your own procedures and ways of working in order to en-
hance public services.
Hostage of projects
As a project manager in government you have to follow certain
steps before you can start. You need to find support of your
manager, colleagues and politics. Every entity you have to pass
takes around one month in order to convince your peers. Every
entity can block your project and every objection takes another 6
months of delay. In the meanwhile you can rewrite your projects
and business cases at least ten times.
The advantage is that at the end of the road you will gain enough
support to start your project. The disadvantage is that innovation
is strangled in slowness. At the end of the reign, everything
changes. Discussion and support are losing importance. Before
elections everything must go fast and sometimes politics pushes
to realize projects without following much procedures.
8

9. Far away client
Sometimes government forgets that it actually works for
civil servants. People are visiting government because they
expect a particular service. People are no machines but are
real flesh and blood. Procedures sometimes make govern-
ment very impersonal. Citizens are a number. Government
talks about a customer friendly service.
A department works out a strategy about how to come
closer to the customer. In practice it doesn’t work well. One
of the reasons why is because government sometimes for-
get to talk with citizens.
Some local initiatives have great practices of how you can
co-create services with citizens. With the aid of a technique
called „service design” public services are for example able
to construct participative budgets in order to accomplish
social projects.Ideas are made very concrete in a short time
with pictures, drawings and prototypes in order to tune it
with the citizens.
There is no one size fits all solution. Different aspects live in
society and government has to face it. When you bring dif-
ferent people together and take the time to listen you can
discover the true needs. Building social capital doesn’t go
from one day to another. It goes very slow because you
have to make a foundation of trust. Where private initiatives
have no answer, government has no competition. Cus-
tomers want the best service and if they don’t get it they
talk about it.
Paper dinosaur
When you enter government, you sometimes can smell
paper. Rows of filing cabinets that are barely consulted.
Paper archives eating dust. It is often a habit to print and
save in a closet or on a desk or window sill. The tragedy is
that we mostly forget where we’ve put our paper prints, and
when we do actually need it, we’ll just have to print it…
again…
And when the day arrives government invests in ICT, all entities are
having their own system. Systems talking another language and
difficult to connect.
Within the Flemish government a new policy is coming in:
radical digital. It is most of the time not really a technical
challenge to digitalize documents and to create open data,
but a cultural challenge. A lot of civil servants are used to
paper and the power it sometimes evokes. Important in-
formation has to be on paper. Black on white.
And when the day arrives government invests in ICT, all
entities are having their own system. Systems talking an-
other language and difficult to connect.
Non-papers
In the lobby you can do good business. In every organization
you have gossip and informal information channels. In gov-
ernment there is even a document setting this up: a non-pa-
per. A non-paper actually doesn’t exist and it helps decision
makers to clear out some points before decision is made.
The inner circle knows about it, but the outside world doesn’t
have a clue. And then, all in a sudden, parliament votes
„yes”.
Non-papers appear to be hacking democracy to gain difficult
and fast decisions. This kind of practice lowers confidence in
government and politics. Of course they can be very useful in
times of trying new thinking and doing. We’re not saying it
can or should never be used again. Only: it would be more
transparent if the existence of this kind of decision making is
known and publicly acknowledged.
9

10. Trapped
in a
cage
You have probably seen it before, a
terrarium. The concept is very sim-
ple: you take an empty aquarium
and put some earth, branches,
leaves and a reptile in it. The ani-
mals forget they live in captivity.
They will never get out and stay in
the protected zone.
There are different ways governments
are keeping their employees in a terrari-
um: the permanent appointment, ac-
quired rights, time clocks, etc.
01. The statute gives a golden ticket for
lifetime job security. It is a golden ticket,
but also a golden cage. Permanent
appointments keep people in their com-
fort zone, but outside the world is
changing.
02. Civil servants have gained a set of
acquired rights. The can for example
earn a better paid retirement than con-
tractual employers or are paid a long
time without wage loss when sick. All
these advantages prevent them from
going after an other challenge.
03. Civil servants often work in a sys-
tem of time clocks instead of results.
In a time where most work is done
from a computer, this all seems so
weird. Civil servants seem to be paid
for being at the office and not for the
results they achieve. Time clocks are
cultivating this attitude.
Al lot of civil servants actually want to
go out of their cage. They see how
things are going on and sometimes
know the solution to make services
better. The cage stops them doing so
it is not part of their job. Job profiles
tells them what to do and everything
outside the profile is not their busi-
ness.
Innovation can only become true if
people can color outside the lines.
Give them some scratching space to
discover other things and projects.
Space to network and connect tal-
ents.
This does not mean we should aban-
don all we know…
Give civil servants some
scratching area so they can
innovate.
Give them space to innovation, trust and all
talents we have within our organization.
Governments are made by, for and with
customers, so they can get what they
deserve: a performant, client friendly and
new government.
10

11. 11

12. A meteorite
strikes in
When a meteorite strikes in, a huge
cloud of dust appears. Government
is facing a series of meteorite at-
tacks and must try to see through-
out the dust.
Answering great expectations
Citizens are expecting more then ever
before.They want to ask a question
trough the channel they choose and get
a clear answer right ahead. It will not be
enough only to digitalize the way gov-
ernment works. That will only digitalize
bureaucracy. Government needs to
rethink the way it communicates to citi-
zens.
People are getting older
People are living longer and at the same
time there will be less people available at
the labour market. Government has to
deal with the war for talent and be pre-
pared to activate society.
Smart machines
Technology grows faster and is taking
over governmental challenges. For ex-
ample apps organizing alternative public
transport or answering questions much
faster than the civil servant at his desk.
New media ecology
Media is becoming part of peoples lives.
Smartphones and internet are growing
inside people and becoming part of their
biorhythm.
Connected world
The world is connected and this means
that problems of government will soon be-
come a broader problem. We focus on
email but customers expect answers
through social media.
12

13. From dust till
swarm
If you want to beat the dust it is im-
portant to figure out where the dust
actually comes from. Why is it so
difficult to see clear and why are the
challenges in society so complex?
We just like to make things complicated.
We have built government throughout
history and before we realize it we are
dealing with exceptions, complex pro-
cedures and even services that are out-
dated. It is important to focus on what
really matters. During the past we al-
ways focussed on what goes wrong.
Government analyses numbers about
poverty, wants to decrease crime, and
so on. .In the contrary we see that
poverty and crime is increasing. If you
focus too much on the things that go
wrong, it might really go wrong. This self
fulfilling prophecy is blocking our mind to
look at positive possibilities.
If we look at society as a swarm, you
see people like to fly to stories and
things that make us happy. What if gov-
ernment would spot positive trends
about health, friendship, freedom, edu-
cation, etc. ? Government can stimulate
society to fiend the happiness it is
looking for. Professor Ruut Veenhoven made
the World Database of Happiness and fig-
ured out what makes a society happy. One
of the most important elements is the quality
of life. The more modern a society is, the
more happy people are.
Government should go back to basics and
become a swarm. The swarm contains flexi-
ble talents going from one challenge to an-
other. This means also a new form of leader-
ship based on working together instead of
demand and control. It also means govern-
ment can always be challenged by society.
Let’s introduce “the right to challenge” so the
swarm can begin!
13

14. The
movement
of the
Dinobusters
Of course we (Joke, Elke and Nan-
cy) are not alone. A lot of civil ser-
vants are trying to make govern-
ment a dynamic and innovative
place. We can make these brave
civil servants more powerful simply
by connecting them to each other.
The laws of the Dinobusters
We’ve made the “10 laws of the
Dinobusters” (p. 15). With a little smile
we would like to offer a positive
alternative to the laws of power. (for
example: Always Say Less Than
Necessary…)
To all the Dinobusters in the world:
let’s connect!
Social media is a blessing to connect
and share knowledge. It can help you
to get out of your cocoon and give an
extra boost to your Dinobuster actions.
The movement to a new govern-
ment has already started. It only
takes you to get you seeing, doing,
saying and thinking in balance.
This is not the end. The government
will need to change through time and
adapt to new challenges over and over
again. More than ever it’s not the most
powerful that will survive -but the ones
most adaptive to change (Charles
Darwin).
14

15. 10 laws of the Dinobusters
1. I am proud to be a civil servant and I bring positive news from government.
2. I have the guts to do and to think, to see and to say without fear.
3. I will support other Dinobusters and I will protect them so they can innovate.
4. I am flexible and I will always be open for new opportunities, learning experiences
and ideas.
5. I will always be an ambassador for my government.
6. I will do my best to learn how public services work.
7. I talk to my customers instead of just talking about them.
8. I promise to keep procedures and decisions short and simple.
9. I search diversity and recognize talents.
10.I dare to think and do outside existing structures and I’m not afraid of innovation and
change.
15

16. Spreading
the word
Dinosaurs are not only a problem of
government. You can find them also in
big organizations. It is important to talk
about it so we all can figure out how to
get rid of dinosaur situations.
We have written this book during our free
time and invested a lot of our private money
to get it published. Crazy? Maybe..But
again…We have a dream. We think media
can help to spread the message that
change is possible.
Our book reached a lot of press in
Belgium after the launch. We received
letters, phone calls and messages on
social media from all kinds of people
recognizing our story. Lots of people want
to get started and break out of their
golden cage.
The road ahead is still long, and yet we
keep on going.
We give lectures, workshops and write
opinions to inspire people to start their
own change.
»
16

17. Our story was published in several Belgian newspapers, it was spread in the Flemish Parliament and we
even managed to pin the Minister President a Dinobuster badge :-)
The Dinobuster
book in Flemish
Parliament
A picture taken by a
member of the Paria-
ment.
17

18. Giving lectures and
workshops
We try to inspire people
to start their own innova-
tion in government.
18

19. Inspiring the Flemish elections
The Flemish newspaper ‘De Tijd’ pub-
lished a special article about the ideas in
our book as one of the most interesting
actions to save money in government
and to be more effective.
Building bridges with different
generations
We got inspired by people like Fons Leroy
(Director of VDAB) and learned from them
how government works.
Presenting workshops at congresses
and seminars
We shared our story by giving lectures
and workshops.
19

20. 20
LICHAAMSTAAL
TOTUW
DIENST
NancyDeVogelaere
JokeRenneboog
ElkeWambacq
WAAROM
DE NIEUWE AMBTENAAR
KLANTVRIENDELIJK IS
DINOBUSTERS
VEROVEREN
DEOVERHEID
VEROVEREN
DEOVERHEID
Find us on…
Web
www.dinobusters.be
Twitter
@din0busters
Mail
info@dinobusters.be
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/dinobusters
Published 30/01/2014 - 24,05 € Published 22/10/2014 - 29,95 €