What does an average working day look like for the staff of CBS’s Infoservice and Press Office? ‘Good morning, CBS Infoservice, Astrid speaking.’ It is Tuesday morning and the phonelines are open. ‘The annual rent increase? You can calculate that using our rent calculator. Are you familiar with that?’ asks Astrid Gubbels, who has been an Infoservice coordinator since 2021. Gubbels explains where to find the calculator on the website. ‘Go to the homepage of the CBS website, scroll down to the grey box at the bottom of the page and then click on Calculate Rent Increase on the left under Our Services.’
A wealth of knowledge
The small Infoservice team is responsible for answering a lot of questions each day. They do this using their extensive knowledge of CBS statistics but also by asking other departments for answers. Staff members try to answer questions themselves first. ‘I can find a lot of information myself by searching the CBS database, StatLine,’ says Monique Peterzen.
Short response times
Peterzen has worked at Statistics Netherlands for decades, and has been with the Press office for fifteen years. But even with her long history of service, she does not have all the answers. ‘There’s so much information available on so many subjects.’ The Infoservice and Press Office refer to an extensive directory of contacts within the organisation that contains the names of experts on all the subjects that CBS provides figures on. ‘That directory is incredibly important to us,’ Gubbels agrees. The Infoservice aims to have an answer to every question within five days. Questions to the Press Office need to be answered within 24 hours. 'The fact that we have easy access to experts who can respond quickly helps us to achieve those short response times,' says Gubbels.
Popular web pages
A number of pages have been added to the CBS website to help people find the answers to the most frequently asked questions more quickly. The most visited page is the rent calculator, where tenants and landlords can calculate the annual rent increase for their home in five easy-to-follow steps. This page was visited 343 946 timesin 2024. Other popular web pages relate to indexation for new contracts (including information about how to apply CBS’s price indexes to contracts) and the subscriptions page (where people can subscribe to the various CBS newsletters).
So many questions
Newspaper editors and journalists from broadcasting organisations, news websites and international media all find their way to the CBS Press Office when they have a question. ‘They contact us when they want to speak to a spokesperson or need background information for an article, for example’, Peterzen explains. ‘We get questions on a whole range of subjects. It could be ‘Has the number of asparagus farmers in Noord-Holland fallen over the past decade?’ or ‘What percentage of single people in their sixties are currently dating?’ or ‘Where in the Netherlands do the most Syrian people live?’ The Press Office staff are no longer surprised by anything.
A variety of subjects
‘We enjoy the variety of our work,’ Peterzen says. ‘It is also very rewarding when we see that the figures that we looked up earlier that day appear in the newspaper or on the news.’ That happens quite often. In 2024, CBS figures and surveys were cited no less than 120 465 times in various media publications. Work finishes for the day at five o’clock, but the CBS Press Office is available for journalists after hours. A colleague is always available to speak to the media in the evening and on weekends. The Infoservice stops taking calls at three o’clock in the afternoon, but they continue to answer emails until five.
