“I love the connection between shipping and IT”
Since January 2025, Sjoerd Conijn, shipping information manager at Rijkswaterstaat, has been a member of the DigiShape core team and the program team. He took over this role from Joan Staeb, who supervised him during his Computer Science studies. “I knew DigiShape from projects and meetings, but I didn’t know how the DigiShape organization worked,” he says. “When Joan indicated that it was time to hand over the baton, he asked me. That’s how I got into it.”
From the Royal Netherlands Navy to Rijkswaterstaat
Sjoerd’s love for water was in him from an early age. “I was seventeen when I joined the Submarine Service of the Royal Netherlands Navy. There I have seen a lot of dangers and the world. I was able to continue that experience at Rijkswaterstaat in the world of hydrography, with advanced sensors, IT systems and data analyses.”
As information manager for shipping, Sjoerd directs the data flow around the main waterway network. “Rijkswaterstaat has the broad ambition to make decisions based on data-driven working. From daily operations to strategic choices about maintenance and renewal. This data comes from multiple source systems such as the operational system of bridge and lock keepers and answers questions such as: ‘How well is the main waterway network performing? How many ships pass through a work of art? Where is there a dropout?’ I direct that entire data chain.”
A lot of energy and ideas within DigiShape
After nine months in the core team, Sjoerd mainly notices the energy in the DigiShape community. “Everyone wants to share, meet and hear what others are doing. There are so many ideas, but the implementation is always the most difficult: which idea do you pick up, who joins, and is it feasible?”
As a core team member, Sjoerd wants to contribute to the ideas and course of DigiShape from Rijkswaterstaat. “I bring in the issues that we are working on as Rijkswaterstaat. In the core team, I immediately hear whether other partners are also doing something with it or are interested in it. This creates new ideas or plans that we can further develop together.”
Sharing knowledge
A concrete example is the upcoming DigiShape meeting on 15 October. “Then we want to share with each other which AI projects we are working on. Not to exchange code or recruit partners, but simply to tell what we are doing as organizations. That already yields so much: it may turn out that others are working on the same issues as Rijkswaterstaat. It does not always have to be directly related to the water sector. It can also involve, for example, systems for business operations or summarizing board notes with AI. By sharing that, you know which knowledge is in which organization. That is often difficult to uncover, and that is precisely where the added value of DigiShape lies.”
Supply and demand
What Sjoerd would like to see more of is that the demand side comes to the fore more strongly. “Everyone is proud of what he or she has made and wants to show it. ” That makes sense, but sometimes it is necessary to be vulnerable and to share openly: this is the problem that Rijkswaterstaat, another DigiShape partner or a water board is facing. Then we can look for solutions together. This still happens too little.”
At the same time, he points to an area of tension: Rijkswaterstaat cannot just do business with a specific party. “As a government organization, we must give everyone the chance. That is why we work with tenders. We can’t say: let’s do this case with that DigiShape partner.”
But there are also possibilities. “We can put problems and knowledge on the table, work together in-kind, invest hours together to work on a solution direction or a design proposal. New initiatives are often desirable for several partners. This makes DigiShape valuable for Rijkswaterstaat: it creates space to exchange ideas, without having to immediately enter into a tender. This is happening concretely in projects such as the Digitwin North Sea and the AI Impulse Programme, which show how collaboration leads to new functionality, insights and shared experiences.”
Looking ahead
Sjoerd himself is proud of the innovations that the water sector is already using: from drones and satellite data to autonomous shipping. He finds the latter particularly special: “It is nice to see how conservative inland shipping is taking steps towards autonomous shipping. That can really change the sector. After all, inland shipping is a crucial artery in our European transport network.”
Sjoerd sees a clear task with digitization for the coming decades: sustainability. “We have to move towards a sustainable fleet: hydrogen, electric, ammonia. Even on a small scale, for example with shore power in ports, this can have a huge impact on the living environment. The entire sector and also Rijkswaterstaat must work on this. The best thing is, of course, if we can do it together as much as possible.”
