The Dutch Tax Administration (Belastingdienst) is responsible for levying, monitoring, and collecting national taxes, social security contributions, and healthcare contributions. In addition, the organization ensures compliance with legislation and combats financial and tax fraud, partly through the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD).
The organization employs over 28,000 people, many of whom are in direct contact with citizens and businesses. Others support operations through facility services, central directorates, and corporate teams.
The Dutch Tax Administration is part of the Ministry of Finance and carries out a wide range of statutory responsibilities. One of the largest IT organizations in the Netherlands supports this execution on a daily basis.
The Client Challenge
Highberg was engaged to support an agile transformation program within Information Provision (IT delivery). The objective was to bring all value streams to a baseline level of agile working, based on the Dutch Tax Administration model “SABel” (inspired by SAFe).
The goal was to support the organization’s ambition to become more customer-centric, agile, and predictable. Close collaboration took place between Highberg consultants, the program team, and stakeholders within the Dutch Tax Administration, both in terms of content and approach.
The Approach
The strength of the approach lay in the integrated combination of strategic change management and implementation power, supported by deep expertise in agile and IT delivery. This ensured that the transformation was strengthened across the full spectrum: from governance and collaboration within value streams to portfolio management, workflows, and supporting tooling. Highberg supported the redesign of value stream structures, enabling teams to take on more end-to-end responsibility and improve their ability to deliver value to end users. Across all participating value streams, portfolio structures were further developed using consistent definitions and approaches, through analysis, workshops, and hands-on support in standardizing ways of working.
Efforts were made to improve value-driven working by supporting effective work slicing and ensuring consistent and accurate registration in Jira. Structural improvements were also implemented in the Jira setup, such as enhanced cross-stream linking of work items and the explicit use of Jira during agile events to support decision-making. To measure and sustain the results of the transformation, an organization-wide dashboard was developed based on Jira data, enabling continuous steering on metrics such as agility and predictability.
Results
The project supported the Dutch Tax Administration in defining a uniform baseline for SABel ways of working across all 15 value streams and supported 10 of them in implementation. This standardized baseline created greater alignment in prioritization, cadence, and governance. Teams gained clarity on roles, frameworks, and ways of working, leading to improved collaboration. Stronger alignment was also established between the transformation program and the governing departments. An important and unexpected benefit was a fundamental shift in how teams perceive work and uncertainty—moving analysis and decision-making toward a continuous, iterative process. Measurable improvements were achieved in both predictability and agility, contributing directly to the ambition of becoming more agile, predictable, and customer-centric.
