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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

Realise your ambition! Connect with your local community of digital leaders.

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Upcoming Events

 
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Belgium 28-8-25 Country Members Physical english

20 Years CIONET - CIONET Belgium: Summer Festival

A special celebration marking 20 years of CIONET—two decades of empowering digital leaders and driving innovation in the technology landscape. This exclusive event will bring together our members to reflect on the incredible journey we've shared and look ahead to the future of digital leadership.Featuring keynote presentations from visionary CIOs, industry pioneers, and founding members, we’ll explore how far we’ve come and what lies ahead in the ever-evolving world of technology. Together, we will honour the contributions of our members who have shaped CIONET’s legacy while offering insights into how the community will continue to lead in the years to come.This is more than a celebration—it’s an opportunity to reconnect, reflect, and recharge with your fellow digital leaders. Don't miss this exclusive experience packed with inspiring talks, networking opportunities, and special recognitions that highlight the best of CIONET’s history and future.Let’s celebrate the past, present, and future of the digital community you helped build.

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Belgium 28-8-25 Country Members Physical english

Summer Festival - Advisory Board

A special celebration marking 20 years of CIONET—two decades of empowering digital leaders and driving innovation in the technology landscape. This exclusive event will bring together our members to reflect on the incredible journey we've shared and look ahead to the future of digital leadership. Featuring keynote presentations from visionary CIOs, industry pioneers, and founding members, we’ll explore how far we’ve come and what lies ahead in the ever-evolving world of technology. Together, we will honour the contributions of our members who have shaped CIONET’s legacy while offering insights into how the community will continue to lead in the years to come.

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Belgium 2-9-25 All TRIBERS Virtual english

What Does It Cost to Host an App? ; A practical guide to calculating hosting costs across infra, licenses, and operations

You’ve been asked a simple question: “What does it cost to host this application?” But the answer is anything but simple. The platform sits across multiple data centres. The app spans a few VMs, shares a backup system, uses licensed monitoring, and touches five different teams. Your CMDB should help, but it’s rigid, outdated, or incomplete. And yet, you still need to provide a number, clear, explainable, and grounded in reality.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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August 20, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Motywowanie pracowników - programy, metody i dobre praktyki

To oczywiste, że o sukcesie organizacji decydują ludzie. Ci powinni być zmotywowani i uśmiechnięci. Wysoki poziom identyfikacji i zaangażowania buduje się długo i mozolne, ale najlepsi managerowie mają sprawdzone techniki, praktyki i metody cierpliwego podnoszenia motywacji zespołów.

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August 20, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical polish

SECURITY TRIBE: SESJA STRATEGICZNA

Podczas wystąpień, case studies i stolików dyskusyjnych omówimy następujące zagadnienia:    Wdrożenie Zero Trust Cybersecurity risk assesment / Risk management / Zarządzanie ryzykiem w organizacji kluczowej Zarządzanie tożsamością / PIM/IAM / IAM Bezpieczenstwo w łancuchu życia aplikacji i systemów (Bezpieczestwo SDLC)

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August 26, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

AI w chmurze czy on-prem? Praktyczne porównanie środowisk w budowie i rozwoju projektów

Marek Laskowski z Domański Zakrzewski Palinka, opierając się na doświadczeniach z wdrażania rozwiązań AI zarówno w chmurze, jak i w środowiskach on-premises, przedstawi praktyczne porównanie obu podejść. Omówi kluczowe aspekty: od kosztów i time-to-market, przez wymagane kompetencje i model organizacji zespołów IT, po utrzymanie i skalowanie rozwiązań. Marek przyjrzy się zaletom i wadom obu modeli i wskaże, jakie kryteria powinny decydować o wyborze środowiska dla konkretnego projektu AI.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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Tearing down silos to build better delivery of city services

The City of Helsinki and IBM Consulting co-create faster, more flexible customer experiences with a digital assistant network

The City of Helsinki takes care of its own. In fact, it offers its citizens hundreds of services—covering everything from healthcare to housing to infrastructure. Over 38,000 employees help provide those services, making the city the largest employer in the country.

Those services generate enormous quantities of data, continuously building upon an already vast store. “We’ve been utilizing many of our services for a very long time,” says Tomas Lehtinen, Head of Data for the City of Helsinki. “Some of our systems have data going back almost 30 years.”

In 2019, the city established a data strategy to start harnessing the potential of that data. “Our team wanted to enable data-driven decision-making,” says Lehtinen, “as well as to apply that data to optimizing the city’s operations and proactively responding to citizens’ service needs on their terms.”

At the time, each service organization had its own customer service team, and many dealt with high volumes of citizen requests. “Customer service personnel were overworked,” says Janne Kantsila, Leading Specialist, Automation Technologies for the City of Helsinki. “At the same time, we wanted to improve the customer experience. Our citizens expected faster service and more flexible service hours. They didn’t want to be put in queues.”

To help address these issues, the city turned to virtual assistants—or “chatbots”—experimenting with various vendors’ solutions across several departments. Once the city had verified how virtual assistants could best serve its citizens, it developed a request for proposal (RFP) for a virtual assistant platform to support its long-term digitalization needs.

Chief among the platform requirements were natural language processing and the ability to connect to other systems—including those of Helsinki’s regional internal departments, other Finland cities and outside vendors—using APIs. The virtual assistants also linked to many other areas indirectly, such as the release of the virtual assistant training data on Helsinki Region Infoshare, an open web service established in 2011 over which major cities in the metropolitan area could exchange data. “By opening up our chatbot data, we could help other cities in Finland with their own chatbots, so they wouldn’t have to start from scratch,” says Kantsila.

Other required capabilities included the ability to connect to process automation via APIs and automated translations. Data privacy laws are stringent in the EU—and even more so in Finland, where transparency and trust are top priorities. The City of Helsinki wanted a solution that could run from a local Finland data center, when needed, to protect highly sensitive data, like social services and healthcare information.

IBM® offered the best overall solution for the city’s needs—and had a local Helsinki team that could help deliver it. 

The ‘multi-chatbot’ is part of our long-term vision for chatbots. We want to tear down the silo walls that separate our organization, so they’re invisible to the user. 
Janne KantsilaLeading Specialist, Automation Technologies, City of Helsinki
 
 
 A network of virtual assistants

Once the RFP was finalized, the City of Helsinki and IBM Consulting™ worked together to design the virtual assistant implementation using IBM watsonx Assistant, initially running on IBM Cloud®.

The first virtual assistant the team undertook was for the city’s Sporting and Outdoor department. “We specified the chatbot scope and designed the user experience—for things like tone of voice and how to fit the chatbot within our chat application on the web pages,” says Kantsila. “Then we began gathering the necessary chatbot training model for things like intents and answers to questions.”

In co-creating the training model with the city, IBM Consulting applied elements of the IBM Garage™ methodology, a proven development framework that integrates people, processes and technology to transform business and culture. “We didn’t have chat logs from customer service available,” says Kantsila, “so we ran mini-workshops with customer service personnel to get their input on citizens’ most common inquiries.”

The team began work on the digital assistant in December 2020 and launched it in early March of 2021—less than three months from the start date. Following publication, the team continued to monitor and refine the virtual assistant training and intent models based on actual customer questions.

Next up was the maternal advisory virtual assistant, which served expectant and new mothers. The department had an existing virtual assistant, but it was structured differently from the IBM watsonx Assistant virtual assistant, and the team had to redesign the intent model and do significant dialog building from the ground up. “Users were quite happy to see that there was a continuation of the chatbot,” says Kantsila.

The team then built an internal IT virtual assistant for employees that incorporated IBM Watson Discovery. When the virtual assistant cannot answer a question, the solution searches through an enormous instruction library for relevant documents to help.

Following the IT virtual assistant, the team developed a rental housing services virtual assistant, a financial services virtual assistant to help with billing and other finance-related inquiries and an International House Helsinki virtual assistant to help immigrants and new international employees settle in the Helsinki capital region.

 
Our employees are learning how to use different kinds of data and AI-based systems. Sometimes they’re afraid that a new system like AI is going to take their jobs. But now they are seeing that it’s supporting them and giving them more time to devote to helping patients and other citizens. 
Tomas LehtinenHead of Data, City of Helsinki
 
 
 
 The virtual assistant of the future

Currently, the City of Helsinki is running 10 virtual assistants, including a “multi-chatbot” that combines virtual assistants from several healthcare and social services organizations into one. Typically, the virtual assistants handle up to 300 customer contacts per day and can handle most inquiries from start to finish. The “multi-chatbot” takes advantage of IBM Watson Language Translator to translate skills training services, which are in Finnish, into Swedish and English, the other two predominant languages in Finland.

“The ‘multi-chatbot’ is part of our long-term vision for chatbots,” says Kantsila. “We want to tear down the silo walls that separate our organization, so they’re invisible to the user. Ultimately, we want to provide self-service features with our chatbots, enabling citizens to take action, Such cases could include changing an invoice due date or canceling an appointment.”

Innovation is top of mind in developing new virtual assistants. “We don’t just want to automate existing processes,” says Kantsila, “but rather think of new processes that can deliver services to citizens proactively, more efficiently and in a more user-friendly way.”

Employees are also starting to embrace the new technologies. “Our employees are learning how to use different kinds of data and AI-based systems,” says Lehtinen. “Sometimes they’re afraid that a new system like AI is going to take their jobs. But now they are seeing that it’s supporting them and giving them more time to devote to helping patients and other citizens.”

The City of Helsinki team continues to meet weekly with a local IBM team to plan and develop new virtual assistants and capabilities. “It really helps that the IBM team is open-minded and solution oriented,” says Kantsila. “Now that we have the foundations in place, we want to develop our existing chatbots further to gain even greater value. With IBM, we can throw around a lot of crazy-seeming ideas and openly discuss and refine them. I think because of that, we are moving into an even more exciting phase.”

 

Woman typing into cell phone
 
 
 
About the City of Helsinki

The City of Helsinki is a government entity that provides a large number of services for its 650,000 citizens. Those services cover a wide range of areas, from healthcare to education to land use. With approximately 38,000 employees, the city is Finland’s largest employer

 

CIONET Circles

CIONET Business Circles

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Healthcare Circle

Digital Transformation is redefining the future of health care and health delivery. All stakeholders are convinced that these innovations will create value for patients, healthcare practitioners, hospitals, and governments along the patient pathway. The benefits are starting from prevention and awareness to diagnosis, treatment, short- and long-term follow-up, and ultimately survival. But how do you make sure that your working towards an architecturally sound, secure and interoperable health IT ecosystem for your hospital and avoid implementing a hodgepodge of spot solutions? How does your IT department work together with the other stakeholders, such as the doctors and other healthcare practitioners, Life Sciences companies, Tech companies, regulators and your internal governance and administrative bodies?

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Telenet Business Leadership Circle

The Telenet Business Leadership Circle powered by CIONET, offers a platform where IT executives and thought leaders can meet to inspire each other and share best practices. We want to be a facilitator who helps you optimise the performance of your IT function and your business by embracing the endless opportunities that digital change brings.

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Les Rencontres

Découvrez la dynamique du leadership numérique aux Rencontres de CIONET, le programme francophone exclusif de CIONET pour les leaders numériques en Belgique, rendu possible grâce au soutien et à l'engagement de nos partenaires de programme : Deloitte, Denodo et Red Hat. Rejoignez trois événements inspirants par an à Liège, Namur et en Brabant Wallon, où des CIOs et des experts numériques francophones de premier plan partagent leurs perspectives et expériences sur des thèmes d'affaires et de IT actuels. Laissez-vous inspirer et apprenez des meilleurs du secteur lors de sessions captivantes conçues spécialement pour soutenir et enrichir votre rôle en tant que CIO pair. Ne manquez pas cette opportunité de faire partie d'un réseau exceptionnel d'innovateurs numériques !

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Female Leadership Circle

CIONET is committed to highlighting and celebrating female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, creating a leadership programme that empowers and elevates women within the tech industry. This initiative is dedicated to showcasing the achievements and successes of leading women, fostering an environment where female role models are recognised, and their contributions can ignite progress and inspire the next generation of women in IT. Our mission is to shine the spotlight a little brighter on female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, and to empower each other through this inner network community.

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Check out our latest news

Testimonials

Geert Goethals
Geert Goethals
CIO
Sibelga
Bahadir Samli
Bahadir Samli
CIO
ING Belgique
2-Feb-29-2024-11-35-00-9309-AM
Bart Kerkhofs
Vice President & Head of IT
Bridgestone EMIA
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Michał Paprocki
Group CIO
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Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer
Chief Information Officer
NATO
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Annick Faes
Vice President IT and CIO Medical Devices EMEA
Johnson & Johnson
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Piet De Ceuleners
Global IT Director
Melexis
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Dirk De Bevere
Large Enterprise Sales Leader
Telenet Business
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Stef Schampaert
Country Managing Director BeLux
Red Hat
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Geert Lejon
Vice President Head of Belux / Head of Comms Benelux
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Kevin Ledegen
Group IT director
SDWorx
Gunter-Van-Craen_Small
Gunter Van Craen
Chief Digital & Information Officer
Bekaert
Thomas Kessler
Thomas Kessler
Partner | CIO Programme Leader
Deloitte
Emmanuel Gob
Emmanuel Gob
CIO
DPD
pascal pauwels
Pascal Pauwels
CIO
Colruyt
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Koen Segers
Managing Director Belgium and Luxembourg
Dell Technologies
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Benoît Dewaele
Group IT Directo
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Dirk Deridder-1
Dirk Deridder
CTO - Technology Services & Practices
SMALS
Thierry Driesens
Thierry Driesens
CIO
TVH
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Koen Vandaele
CIO
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Liesbet D'hoker
Managing Director
Kyndryl BeLux
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Steven Vermeulen
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Jack Hamande
Jack Hamande
Director General Digital Transformation
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Tom Tomczak
Tom Tomczak
Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
NRB
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Cassandre Laurent
Directeur général
Agence du Numérique
an swalens
An Swalens
Head Of IT (CIO)
National Bank of Belgium
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Elke Laeremans
Chief Digital & Supply Chain Officer at Casa International
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Peter Sany
Peter Sany
Executive Advisor
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Steven De Haes
Dean
Antwerp Management School
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Marleen Thorré
Head of Digital EMEA
Mitsubishi Chemical Group
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Christel Plessers
Head of IT European Markets
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Team

Luc Hendrikx
Luc Hendrikx
CEO
Inès De Bien
Inès De Bien
Partner - CCO
1-Feb-08-2022-10-22-08-68-AM
Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
Hendrik Deckers
Hendrik Deckers
Founder - MD
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Jelte Scheys
Tribes Sales Director Belgium
foto Herman
Herman Roelandts
Tribe Master
Joseph Antoun
Joseph Antoun
Senior Program Director
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Eman De Sutter
Program Manager
4-Feb-08-2022-10-22-09-03-AM
Shelly Deracourt
Program Manager
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Charlotte Coen
Partner Success Manager
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Ivana Bradvica
Junior Event Manager
ML B-W-1
Martine Lefevre
Financial Controller
Vlera Berishaa (1)
Vlera Berisha
Junior Community Manager
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Programme & Event Manager

Contact us

Would you like to know more about CIONET Belgium, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!