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DORDRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS – Qualigraf Groupe BV has appointed Steven Garratt, former managing director of Civica Modern.Gov in the United Kingdom, as its new chief executive. Co-founder and outgoing CEO Rens Groeneveld will remain closely involved with the company as a board member and co-owner.
With Garratt, Qualigraf brings in a heavyweight from the market for council and meeting information systems. At Civica, he spent many years leading Modern.Gov, a governance and meeting management solution used by hundreds of local authorities in the UK and beyond.
‘At Civica I saw first-hand what it takes to make digital decision-making work at scale,’ Garratt says. ‘Qualigraf now offers exactly that: everything a political office-holder and the supporting organisation needs to take well-founded, transparent decisions – from the first idea to publication and long-term archiving.’
Founder Rens Groeneveld steps back from day-to-day leadership but remains on the board of the international decision-support specialist
Qualigraf Groupe consists of four sales organisations in the Netherlands, France, Canada and the United Kingdom, supported by an in-house development hub in Dordrecht. These teams jointly build and maintain a single product platform, which is then taken to market by the four country organisations.
According to Groeneveld, this structure has been deliberately constructed over recent years: “We are not a loose collection of products, but one integrated specialist solution for decision-making,” he says. “With our own development team we can comply with local regulation in each country while still benefiting from economies of scale and the exchange of expertise.”
Groeneveld has been the driving force since the early days of DocWolves and later the merged Qualigraf Groupe. As the company expanded into multiple countries, he felt it was time to hand over the day-to-day leadership: “We are moving into a phase where international scale, governance experience and operational discipline weigh more heavily than pure pioneering spirit,’ he says. ‘Steven brings exactly that mix. I remain involved at board level to help guard the strategy, but it is healthy for a new generation to take the helm.”
At Civica Modern.Gov, Garratt helped build what he describes as ‘the default committee management system for the United Kingdom and Ireland’. The software supports council and committee meetings, paperless working, in-app voting and the publication of agendas and documents to citizens.
“That experience is what I am bringing to Qualigraf,” he says. “What appeals to me is that Qualigraf does not see council information as an isolated product, but as part of the entire decision-making chain – from executive and management papers through to transparent publication for councils, regulators and the wider public.”
“In a single platform we can record how interests are declared, how documents are drafted, who made which changes when, and how decisions are ultimately published,’ Garratt explains. ‘Best practices from one jurisdiction can then be made technically available to clients in others.”
Groeneveld agrees that this cross-border learning is one of the group’s key strengths. “As a small, highly specialised player we can learn across borders faster than many large vendors,” he says. “A change in Canadian rules on conflicts of interest can inspire us to design a new module that later benefits Dutch or French clients as well. That cross-pollination is one of our greatest assets.”
Garratt’s appointment comes at a time when democratic institutions are under pressure internationally. Autocratic regimes are gaining ground and polarisation has increased even within established Western democracies. “Precisely in turbulent times, the importance of transparent, verifiable decision-making cannot be overstated,” Garratt says. “If citizens can no longer follow how decisions are reached, space opens up for distrust, disinformation and undue influence from outside.”
Groeneveld sees a growing role for specialised software in safeguarding that transparency. “Ultimately it is about trust,” he says. “In our systems you can see for every proposal where it originated, how it was prepared, which interests were weighed and how the final decision was taken. That may sound technical, but it is exactly what is needed to maintain legitimacy in a complex world.” Garratt adds: “Good software will not solve the world’s democratic problems. But it does help keep the foundations in order: clear information, traceable processes and a transparent archive. That is where Qualigraf intends to make an even more visible difference in the coming years.”
