Herko Coomans

Current

• Portfoliomanager at RENOIR/ ICTU
• Coordinator Webguidelines @ Overheid heeft Antwoord(c) at ICTU
• Secretary at Wa Yiri Children's Home Ghana Foundation

• Secretary at Child Support Ghana Foundation

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Past

• Knowledge Manager @ Kenniscentrum at ICTU
• Founder, chairman at The XOOPS Foundation
• Internet consultant at ICTU/EGEM

• Editor at Designed.nu
• Owner, webmaster at Dutch XOOPS support portal XOOPS.nl
• Chairman at Child Support Ghana Foundation
• e-Government consultant local government at ICTU/EGEM
• International Project Manager at XOOPS open source CMS project
• Consultant IT in public policy at Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning & Environment (VROM)
• Internship ICT & spatial planning at Ministerie van VROM
• Project consultant interactive policy management (PEGASUS) at Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning & Environment (VROM)
• Owner at The Wizard Games
• Docent Computervaardigheden at Saxion Hogescholen

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Education

• IMAC academie
• NCOI/NIMA
• TriplePlus b.v.

• Bedrijfsopleiding EGEM, i.s.m. Zenc
• Saxion Hogescholen

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Recommended

12 people have recommended Herko

Connections

414 connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

• My Blog
• My Company
• My Website

Herko Coomans’s Summary

Generalist with a passion for helping people discover the problem solving potential within and around them. Educated as an urban and rural planner, trained to be an electronic government consultant, self-made open source project management and web development expert -I am many things to many people. Most of all, I am enthusiastic, passionate, outspoken, helpful and purposeful.

Herko Coomans’s Specialties:

generalist: I know how to talk to many specialists, and link their expertise with the right development path. Very communicative, able to make a project bigger then the sum of all parts.

Herko Coomans’s Experience

• Portfoliomanager

  RENOIR/ ICTU

  (Government Agency; Government Administration industry)

  January 2009 — Present (7 months)

  As portfoliomanager I am actively working on helping a number of e-government programmes to become more and better integrated and coherent.

• Coordinator Webguidelines @ Overheid heeft Antwoord(c)

  ICTU

  (Government Agency; Government Administration industry)

  September 2008 — Present (11 months)

  As coordinator Webguidelines at the Overheid heeft Anwoord (c) programme I am responsible for several pilots for an implementation strategy for web guidelines. In order to structurally improve the accessibility and overall quality of government websites, an implementation strategy has been developed. To make this as practical as possible, several pilots are being organised and managed.
  
  Also, I'll be working on new ideas to improve the overall usability of government websites. Since this is still in the idea-stages, more info on this will follow soon.

• Secretary

  Wa Yiri Children's Home Ghana Foundation

  (Civic & Social Organization industry)

  September 2007 — Present (1 year 11 months)

  The Wa Yiri Children's Home in Wa, Upper West Region of Ghana is a children's home that provides living, cae, loving, education to 11 needy Ghanese children. The Dutch Wa Yiri Foundation supports this Children's home from The Netherlands.

• Secretary

  Child Support Ghana Foundation

  (Non-Profit; 1-10 employees; Non-Profit Organization Management industry)

  March 2007 — Present (2 years 5 months)

  The Child Support Ghana Foundation support project in the Upper West region of Ghana, West Africa, where children in need get offered a chance for a better life. The current projects that are supported are:
  
  - medical support in several outlaying villages,
  - schools for illiterate children,
  - Wa Peace House, hospice for children and mothers suffering from AIDS,
  - Sunjeri street childrens project,
  and much much more.

• Knowledge Manager @ Kenniscentrum

  ICTU

  (Government Agency; Information Technology and Services industry)

  March 2008 — January 2009 (11 months)

  As knowledge manager and team leader it is my respobsibility to help create a knowledge infrastructure for e-government programmes in the Netherlands. This infrastructure will have to be generic, flexible, extensible and modern. It will follow the principles of the Service Oriented Architecture.

• Founder, chairman

  The XOOPS Foundation

  (Internet industry)

  November 2004 — January 2009 (4 years 3 months)

  The XOOPS Foundation is a Dutch foundation (Stichting) created to support the XOOPS open source content management system project and it's international community of users and participators.
  
  My tasks:
  - asset management, mainly managing the funds generated from ads and donations, the webservers the project is hosted on (owned by the Foundation) and the trademark rights to the XOOPS name.
  - organization development, creation and implementation and leading the project organization. Was not a big success, due to many reasons.
  - leadership development, encouraging people from the community to become leaders within the open source movement.
  - legal issues such as filing police reports against hackers who destroy the XOOPS project knowingly and purposefully, as well as getting companies that infringe on the XOOPS project copyrights to cease and desist.
  - fund raising for the project.
  - administrative management
  - representation of the project to businesses and organisations.

• Internet consultant

  ICTU/EGEM

  (Government Agency; 201-500 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

  January 2007 — September 2008 (1 year 9 months)

  - Web strategy development, web content management, responsible for the implementation of the EGEM web strategy, management of several websites, content quality control and editor.
  - Internet consultancy, communications consultancy, responsible for the portfolio 'websites and local government'.
  - Web strategy consultancy for local governments, creation of a web style guide for local governments, tools to professionalize the web strategy and acquisition process of a new website for local governments.
  - Implementation of web applications.
  - Knowledge management, involved in the creation of an ICTU-wide knowledge management strategy and architecture.

• Editor

  Designed.nu

  (Design industry)

  January 2008 — June 2008 (6 months)

  Designed.nu is a new weblog focusing on graphic design, web development and design and more. I am the editor for the web development section.

• Owner, webmaster

  Dutch XOOPS support portal XOOPS.nl

  (Privately Held; Myself Only; Internet industry)

  January 2006 — October 2007 (1 year 10 months)

  As webmaster and core team member I was co-responsible for the daily management of the Dutch XOOPS open source web CMS support community. This included trying to get members actively involved in the support and development communities, communications, marketing, documentation writing, translations and respresenting the DUtch community within the international XOOPS community.

• Chairman

  Child Support Ghana Foundation

  (Non-Profit; 1-10 employees; Fund-Raising industry)

  March 2006 — February 2007 (1 year)

  As chairman and co-founder of the Child Support Ghana Foundation I was responsible for helping to build the organization to support the projects in the Upper West region of Ghana, West Africa. Once the organization was set up, chairmanship was transferred to more influential people.

• e-Government consultant local government

  ICTU/EGEM

  (Government Agency; 1-10 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

  September 2004 — December 2006 (2 years 4 months)

  - EGEM QuickScan certified consultant
  - Organisational development, IT strategy, business process redesign, information strategy, information architecture, leadership, change management, consulting 25 local governments through-out The Netherlands using the INK-management model.
  - Internet strategy development for local governments, responsible for the development of a set of practical tools to enhance the professionalism of local government in the creation and implementation of a client-focussed internet strategy.
  - Best practices, structural change management, project leader for the best practice programme for successful e-gov projects at local governments.
  - Change management, consultant for local governments on how to structurally implement change. Client-focus and organizational change, using John Kotter's leadership change management and the INK management models.

• International Project Manager

  XOOPS open source CMS project

  (Non-Profit; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)

  August 2003 — March 2006 (2 years 8 months)

  With the release of XOOPS 2.0 the project team had delivered a top product -but at a cost: they worked incredibly hard, but needed a rest. However, the XOOPS user community needed to get to know the new system and its possibilities. I wrote a plan to organize community powered support, the creation of documentation, the development of third party modules, the design of new themes. To coordinate this, I was named project manager.
  When I was project manager the XOOPS community grew from 9.000 registered members to 45.000 registered members, got in SourceForge.net's top 10 most active projects, and the number of downloads grew exponentially. XOOPS was recognized as one of the leading open source CMS applications, with organizations like Novell and the European Union using it as a base for their developers communities.
  Tasks:
  - project coordination
  - planning and management
  - resource management
  - communications
  - motivation

• Consultant IT in public policy

  Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning & Environment (VROM)

  (Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

  October 2000 — October 2003 (3 years 1 month)

  Als adviseur ICT en Beleid was ik verantwoordelijk voor de advisering van verschillende beleidsprojecten en lijndirecties over de inzet van ICT als instrument voor het verbeteren van het beleid, zowel qua uitvoering als qua doelstellingen.
  Daarnaast was ik verantwoordelijk voor dossiers als domotica en breedband en was ik projectleider voor het ID-wijk project, een samenwerkingsverband met de Stuurgroep Experimenten Volkshuisvesting. In dat kader heb ik ook het initiatief genomen voor de Wijkwebsites.nl community.
  Ook was ik lokaal ICT beheerder, lid van de Redactieraad Intranet, adviseur over Living Tomorrow Amsterdam, ICES-KIS 3, Ruimte voor Geo-informatie, nieuwe WRO, DURP, Nieuwe Kaart van Nederland.

• Internship ICT & spatial planning

  Ministerie van VROM

  (Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry)

  January 2000 — October 2000 (10 months)

  I wrote my thesis in this period, about the impact of IT consumer services on our motivation to choose our place to live, and how we transport ourselves. It discusses the problem spatial planners face where the physical environment is created to facilitate specific social (and spatial) behavior does not create the expected results due to the fundamental paradigm shift in today's information society.

• Project consultant interactive policy management (PEGASUS)

  Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning & Environment (VROM)

  (Government Agency; 1-10 employees; Management Consulting industry)

  July 1999 — December 1999 (6 months)

  Als projectadviseur van het project Pegasus - een intern projectbureau over innovatieve beleidsontwikkeling - was ik verantwoordelijk voor de ontwikkeling van een aantal communicatieinstrumenten zoals de Pegasus brochures, Pegasus Cafés en het Pegasus Congres. Daarnaast adviseerde ik projecten over inzetten van instrumenten voor interactieve beleidsontwikkeling.

• Owner

  The Wizard Games

  (Privately Held; Myself Only; Internet industry)

  March 1994 — December 1999 (5 years 10 months)

  The Wizard Games was one of the first online stores for fantasy role playing game materials in the world. Orders came from everywhere around the globe: where there was internet, that's where the products were sent to.
  I ran the site together with Bertolt Zalm, an interaction designer from Enkhuizen, the Netherlands.

• Docent Computervaardigheden

  Saxion Hogescholen

  (Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Education Management industry)

  September 1998 — November 1998 (3 months)

  Aan 9 klassen -1e jaars PABO en AMA, alsmede volwassenenonderwijs- heb ik les gegevens over:
  - basiskennis Windows 95
  - basiskennis Microsoft Word 95
  - basiskennis e-mail
  - basiskennis internet

Herko Coomans’s Education

• IMAC academie

  Verbindersprogramma 2009 — 2009

  Een programma voor informatiemanagers en informatiedeskundigen bij de overheid die een meerjarige ervaring hebben en zeer geïnteresseerd zijn in de ontwikkeling en werking van informatiestructuren in complexe overheidsomgevingen. Binnen een kort tijdsbestek maakt u kennis met keten- en netwerkstructuren en de samenhang van de informatievoorziening binnen de overheid. Ervaringen van diverse overheidsorganisaties worden ingebracht.

• NCOI/NIMA

  NIMA-A , NIMA Communicatie-A , 2007 — 2007

  NIMA Communicatie-A, the short and intensive course @ NCOI. Bachelor level communications management, all the basic in 3 months:
  - identity, image, corporate identity
  - internal communications
  - corporate communications
  - marketing communications
  - press
  - media
  - communications strategy and planning

• TriplePlus b.v.

  Prince2 Foundations 2005 — 2005

  Fully Prince2 Foundations certified -with highest score of the class. Prince2 is a full fledged complex project management method that is becoming more and more often used.

• Bedrijfsopleiding EGEM, i.s.m. Zenc

  EGEM QuickScan 2004 — 2005

  The EGEM QuickScan(tm) is a 2 day workshop for local governements (gemeenten) to get insight in their maturity in development of e-government services. It is based on the INK-quality model, and focusses on organizational aspects of development, on social aspects such as leadership and management, and on technical aspects such as planning, control and infrastructure.
  Certification means that I am capable of leading this two-day workshop (held with mayor, aldermen, secretary, management team, IT coordinators and process owners), and give insight in their ambitions and current position. This then results in an advice on how they can achieve their ambitions.

• Saxion Hogescholen

  HBO , Urban and rural planning , 1996 — 2002

  Educated as an urban and rural planner:
  - project management,
  - public policy management,
  - environment management,
  - interactive policy making,
  - mediation,
  - urban and rural design,
  - ecology and water management

Additional Information

Herko Coomans’s Websites:

• My Blog
• My Company
• My Website

Herko Coomans’s Interests:

internet, web 2.0, semantic web, webstandards, e-government, tai chi, dance music, lounge, caribbean, africa, weblogs, running, kung fu, martial arts movies, usability

Herko Coomans’s Groups:

JongICTU, Child Support Ghana

•    ICTU
•    JongICTU
•    Openweb
•    AfricaNews
•    Semantic Web
•    Open Net Works
•    The Netherlands
•    WSG
•    Saxion Hogescholen Alumni
•    eGov Community
•    European Internet Professionals
•    Saxion Hogescholen Alumni Urban and Regional Planning (Ruimtelijke Ordening en Planologie)
•    Government 2.0
•    Web Standards Design + Development
•    One More Thing
•    Ambtenaar 2.0
•    Nederlandse Overheid
•    ICT Overheid
•    Ghana Business Group
•    HartmanEVENT
•    NorGhaVo Foundation
•    eNederland
•    Burgerlink | eParticipatie
•    Nederland Open in Verbinding (NOiV)
•    IMAC Verbindersnetwerk
•    Klantcontactcentrum (KCC)
•    Webrichtlijnen
•    Monitor Overheid.nl
•    The Netherlands

Herko Coomans’s Honors:

Prince2 Foundations certified [project management]
EGEM QuickScan certified [organisational development, IT consulting]
Overall XOOPSer of the Year 2005 [open source community]

Herko Coomans’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• reference requests
• getting back in touch