Which indicators belong in a municipal integration dashboard

A municipal integration dashboard works with three kinds of indicators: process indicators from the municipality's own records (time to the PIP, participation hours against the target, stalled trajectories), outcome indicators on work, education and benefits, and CBS statistics to compare your municipality with others.

Why indicators matter now

The goal of the Wet inburgering 2021, the Dutch civic integration act, is that people required to integrate take part in Dutch society as quickly as possible and find work as quickly as possible. The municipality guides them: with a broad intake, a personal Plan Inburgering en Participatie (PIP) and one of three learning routes. A dashboard therefore has to show more than whether the hours were made. It has to show whether someone works, studies or takes part.

The interim evaluation of the act (January 2026) makes this concrete. Waiting times are too long, municipalities sometimes struggle to find good participation placements, and the state secretary is talking with municipalities about targets and the registration of education and work experience. A municipality that tracks those figures today does not have to reconstruct them later.

There is a second reason. On its page on the Statistiek Wet Inburgering, the Dutch statistics office CBS writes that the quality of municipal data deliveries is disappointing and that many variables are still of insufficient quality, naming software, staffing and reliance on external parties as causes. A dashboard is also a quality tool: what you deliver to the CBS each quarter, you see first.

Three kinds of indicators in one table

A useful integration dashboard combines process indicators from your own registration, outcome indicators on work and education, and context figures from the CBS. The table puts them side by side, with the source and how often each figure refreshes.

Indicator	What it measures	Source	Refreshes
Time to the PIP	Days between settlement and the signed PIP	Own case system; PIP data goes to DUO within 10 working days	Per participant
Split across learning routes	Share on the B1 route, education route and Z route, plus switches	Own registration	Quarterly
Participation hours against the target	Hours built up next to the target in the PIP	Registration at the source, at the partner organization	Immediately
Stalled trajectories	Participants with no hours or activity in recent weeks	Registration at the source	Weekly
PVT and MAP completed	Signed or completed, and within what period	Own registration	Per participant
Work, education, benefits	Share in paid work, in education, on social assistance	Own benefits records; CBS Statistiek Wet Inburgering	Quarterly; CBS yearly
Integration requirement met	Share of the cohort that has finished, been exempted or released	DUO's Portal Inburgering; CBS	Quarterly
Comparison with other municipalities	The same figures for comparable municipalities	CBS dashboard SWI; municipal benchmark	Yearly

Process indicators: what the municipality measures itself

Process indicators come from your own operation and are the only figures you can see today. They belong at the top of the dashboard, per participant and per case manager.

Time to the PIP

The PIP is the plan with the learning route and the agreements on language and participation. According to the CBS Statistiek Wet Inburgering 2024, 95 percent of asylum migrants in the 2022 cohort had a PIP by the end of 2024, and of those, four in ten received it within ten weeks of settling in the municipality. Divosa notes on its information exchange Q&A that municipalities deliver the PIP data to DUO within 10 working days. In your dashboard, time to the PIP is a figure per participant, with the team median next to it.

Participation hours against the target

Participation hours are the hours a newcomer spends at a partner organization, such as a community center, a language café or a volunteer organization. In the Z route, according to DUO's conditions, that is at least 800 hours, including the participation statement process (PVT) and the labor market and participation module (MAP). The indicator is simple: hours built up next to the target in the PIP, per participant and per partner organization. The figure is as reliable as the registration: at the source, on the day someone was present, not retyped afterwards from a monthly list.

Stalled trajectories

A participant with no hours or activity in recent weeks is often the first signal that a trajectory is stalling. Because the interim evaluation notes that participation placements are hard to find, this indicator, shown per partner organization, tells you where the supply is missing, not only which participant is behind.

Outcome indicators: work, education, benefits

Outcome indicators say whether integration reaches the goal of the act: taking part and finding work.

The Statistiek Wet Inburgering 2024 shows what those figures look like nationally: among asylum migrants in the 2022 and 2023 cohorts, just over a quarter of men and one in ten women had a job in the first year after settling, and about 90 percent of the 2022 cohort received a benefit in that first year, mostly social assistance. By the end of 2024, 4 percent of the 2022 cohort had met the integration requirement: 1,100 of 25,900 people, most of them through the B1 route. The large majority was still in the process.

Those figures come once a year and are provisional. For a dashboard you update every quarter, you take work and benefits from your own social assistance records and register education and work experience yourself, the two data points the national government asks about in the discussion on targets. Keep the definitions the same as the CBS uses, so your own figure sits next to the national one later.

Context figures: compare your municipality

Context figures place your municipality next to comparable ones and come from the CBS. The Dashboard Statistiek Wet Inburgering shows per cohort, and for part of the figures per municipality, how people under the act are doing on the integration requirement, the integration trajectory, labor participation, education and benefits, with data through December 2025. The municipal benchmark of people required to integrate (September 2026, funded by Divosa, Stimulansz and BMC) gives per municipality the composition of the cohort, reception, settlement, education, work, income and youth care, plus a separate set on the trajectory under the new act.

Watch what disappears nationally. The Kernindicatoren Integratie 2026, which the CBS compiles yearly for the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, consist of three indicators since this year: net labor participation, the unemployed labor force and the share of pupils in havo/vwo in year 3 of secondary school. Nine earlier indicators, among them social assistance, income and health, were dropped as of 2026. What you want to know locally, you have to record yourself.

How to choose indicators that stay correct

1. One indicator per decision. Every row in the dashboard belongs to a choice by the case manager, the policy officer or the municipal executive. A figure with no decision behind it can go.
2. Measure at the source. Hours, attendance and agreements are recorded by the participant or the partner organization at the moment itself. Retyping from lists is a major source of errors.
3. Define every indicator. What counts as a participation hour, who approves it, from which date the cohort counts. Use the definitions of DUO and the CBS, so your delivery matches.
4. Work per cohort. The CBS counts cohorts from the date DUO establishes the integration requirement. Do the same and your figures become comparable.
5. Settle privacy first. Progress data is personal data: role-based access, a data processing agreement and a DPIA. How that works is in monitoring participation hours GDPR-proof.

How to set up such a dashboard step by step is in tracking civic integration progress with a municipal dashboard.

Where Taaly fits

Taaly is the digital integration assistant for newcomers and supplies the process indicators on participation. Participants check in with a QR code at the partner organization, the municipality or the organization it has designated approves the hours, and the dashboard for municipalities shows the hours built up against the target per participant, route and partner organization, as it happens. A missed check-in is added by the participant in the app or by the case manager in the dashboard. 12 municipalities register hours via Taaly; in the first municipal pilot, the hour-registration module meant 80% less administration.

What Taaly does not do belongs here too. The Taaly dashboard holds no figures on work, education or benefits, and Taaly does not deliver to DUO or the CBS. Those figures come from the case system, the benefits records and the CBS publications above. Taaly keeps the source for participation hours in order, so the rest of the dashboard can build on it.

See how hour registration works and book an introduction.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most important indicators of successful integration in a municipal dashboard?

Three groups. Process indicators from your own operation: time to the PIP, split across learning routes, participation hours against the target, stalled trajectories and completion of PVT and MAP. Outcome indicators: share in paid work, in education, on benefits, and the share that has met the integration requirement. Context figures from the CBS to compare your municipality with comparable ones.

How do municipalities collect and process data on newcomers' social participation?

At the source: the participant or the partner organization records hours and attendance at the moment itself, the municipality or a designated organization approves them, and the case system or a participation app sets them against the target in the PIP. PIP data goes to DUO, trajectory data goes to the CBS every quarter. Processing falls under the GDPR: role-based access, a data processing agreement and a DPIA.

What methods make the progress of integration trajectories visible?

Spreadsheets or lists, a case system, or a participation app with a dashboard in which the participant checks in at the activity. They differ mainly in how fast you see a trajectory stalling. A comparison of the three is in tracking civic integration progress with a municipal dashboard.

How current are the CBS figures on civic integration?

The Statistiek Wet Inburgering appears yearly with provisional figures, counts below ten are not shown in it, and the CBS dashboard runs through December 2025. For quarterly steering you need your own registration; the CBS figures are for comparison.

Which data does the municipality itself deliver to the CBS?

Municipalities deliver trajectory data for the Statistiek Wet Inburgering every quarter, following the CBS guidelines. Which variables those are, and how the delivery to DUO differs from the one to the CBS, is in reporting participation hours to the Dutch government.