Kristoff Hemelinckx

Kristoff is the Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO) at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), more specifically, the prison administration in Belgium. In addition to the "regular" IT business for staff or citizens as end customers, he has also started the digitization detention service. In addition, he also supervises the department that manages the old and new, still developing, OMS (Offender Management System).

He is responsible for the proper functioning of the IT business in 36 existing prisons, in the three prisons under construction and in the new prisons to be built. He also bears this ultimate responsibility in future detention houses. In addition, he contributes to developing a vision of digitization in the daily dealings with detainees. This is done in collaboration with the government community involved, possibly NGOs and other government services.

The core of this lies in digital access for detainees, digital education and connecting the detainee to the highly digitized society after release. This can be done both by providing simple logical technological solutions and by automating basic tasks in the context of service efficiency. An excellent example of this is the digital availability of the legal file down to the cell level. Kristoff has a past in "hard security" as a structural engineer. After a stopover as an advisor to the previous Deputy Prime Minister, he ended up in the beautiful world of digitization, where he took on a pioneering role in this field through his international contacts.