Angela Koelewijn

At Europol I work as a specialist in Corporate Content Management. Currently most of my time is dedicated to an organisation-wide project to implement an Enterprise Content Management system (SharePoint 2010) to replace our current Document Management system and Intranet.

My job is to represent the future business users of the system. I have to speak and interact with the huge variety of users in the organisation to understand their needs, wishes and ways of working.

I also provide the link with IT colleagues (both at Europol and from the external supplier) who design, develop and implement the system, and with Europol colleagues representing other relevant areas such as Security and Data Protection. This means being able to speak many different ‘languages’ and to switch from more technical, abstract discussions to more practical issues for our future users.

When I started working at Europol in August 2008 I already had a Bachelor’s degree in Information and Media. However after a couple of years I felt the need to develop myself further and therefore started a part-time Master’s degree in Business Process Management and IT. Europol has been supportive by partially funding my studies and granting me study days. In addition I have ‘bought’ a number of extra leave days (so call ‘special part-time credits’) which I use for my studies.

This way I can create and maintain a healthy balance between my work, studies and private life, which for me is a real added value on top of having a very interesting job.