We don’t always have reason for optimism when it comes to digital affairs within the Dutch government. But today, I bring somewhat good news!
For years, our government, like many others in Europe, has become increasingly dependent on foreign tech companies. Not because there wasn’t the intention to do things differently, but because alternatives are lacking, as became painfully clear at the Tax Administration recently. The “big tech” players, such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, offer familiar solutions that seem efficient in the short term. But every choice for convenience is also a choice for dependency, and a step away from sovereignty.
The risks of this big tech dependency are now well known. Our digital infrastructure, from email and documents to video conferencing, largely runs on software from companies governed by foreign law. As a result, we hand over not only our data but also part of our decision-making power. We all remember the International Criminal Court (ICC) incident, where Microsoft blocked the email of the chief prosecutor after the Trump administration imposed sanctions following the ICC’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Microsoft has since admitted that data stored on European servers is by definition accessible to the U.S. government under the Cloud Act. Other big tech providers are not much better when it comes to privacy and security.
Across Europe, awareness is growing that digital autonomy is no longer a luxury but a prerequisite for a well-functioning democracy. The current political course in the U.S. poses enormous risks to our digital infrastructure and thus national security. There's a reason that the Dutch Intelligence Services have recently decided to share less information with the U.S. government. Digital sovereignty means the ability of governments to make autonomous choices consistent with European values.
Sovereign Digital Workspaces #
The good news: several Dutch government organizations are developing alternative sovereign technologies, starting with workspaces based on open standards, open-source software, and European infrastructure. Projects such as MijnBureau and DAWO (Digitally Autonomous Government Workspace) are proof of this. They demonstrate that a modern, user-friendly workspace can be built using open-source technology rather than closed source Big Tech systems.
MijnBureau began when the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) managed to get a foot in the door of a program that was exploring Microsoft Office 365 as a future digital workspace solution for government. The OSPO ensured that open-source alternatives, such as Nextcloud and Matrix, were also considered. Over time, the importance of a sovereign workspace became clear for everyone.
It’s impressive how a small team has been skillfully building MijnBureau since then. MijnBureau is based on best practices from both Germany (OpenDesk) and France (LaSuite) and has the advantage of being modular and scalable. It consists of open-source applications for email (tbd), chat (Matrix), video calls (WebKit / Jitsi / Talk), documents (Nextcloud and Collabora), project management (Open Project), and identity management (Keycloak), all within a Haven+ compliant Kubernetes environment. We now receive weekly inquiries from governments, provinces, and municipalities about how they can contribute to MijnBureau. As the project is currently being transferred to ICTU to gain more development capacity, it remains to be seen how it will evolve further.
At the same time, SSC-ICT, which provides 57,000 workspaces, and DICTU, with 16,000 workspaces, have started a pilot for the Digitally Autonomous Government Workspace (DAWO). While MijnBureau focuses on the user and application side, DAWO provides the rest of the stack: from open-source servers, orchestration (Ansible), and virtualization (Proxmox) to a Linux-based workplace (tbd). There is even a solution for mobile device management. Together, they form a complementary whole: DAWO delivers the infrastructure on which MijnBureau can run as an application layer. Step by step, this creates a fully sovereign digital workspace for the entire central government. And hopefully, in time, across all levels of government.
This collaboration is unique. Historically, IT services have always been fragmented across ministries and agencies. For the first time, the central government is working on a unified digital foundation under its own control.
European Cooperation: the EDIC #
This movement doesn’t stop at our borders. Across Europe, governments are working on the same challenge: how to build public IT we can trust.
Two days ago, the European Commission officially launched the European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC), led by our own Art de Blaauw, Director of CIO Rijk. Within the EDIC, the Netherlands and other member states jointly invest in European Digital Commons. The sovereign workplaces of the Netherlands, France, and Germany are the first examples. Collaboration at the European level not only offers economies of scale but also strengthens our position against commercial players.
This has not gone unnoticed in the U.S. On November 18, the Franco-German Summit will take place, where several member states will publicly commit to promoting European digital sovereignty. Attending will be several European Ministers for Digitalization, German Chancellor Merz, French President Macron, and European Commission President Von der Leyen (and yours truly!). Almost immediately after the Summit was announced, the French and German organizers were “asked for clarification” by the U.S. embassy.
It’s clear that a shared European vision is emerging: public digital infrastructure as a basic public utility. That in itself is a huge victory.
OSPO Recommendations #
All these developments are promising, but we’re not there yet. The only reason MijnBureau and DAWO exist at all is that a small number of people dared to go against the tide. Thanks to their persistence, we are now working toward digital autonomy. The next step is clear: there must be a structured approach to digital sovereignty. Clear governance, a government-wide vision, and structural funding instead of temporary projects.
At the OSPO, we’re working hard to anchor this in policy. We now have the “open, unless” policy, encouraging governments to choose open standards and open-source software unless there are compelling reasons not to. We actively collaborate with the open-source community to remove procurement barriers and work nationally and across Europe with other OSPOs and governments.
The OSPO is the driving force behind initiatives such as MijnBureau and the national code platform (using Forgejo). The latter is my current project, which aims to replace Microsoft GitHub as the government’s dev environment. Public code must remain in public hands. We are also working to embed the role of open source in digital autonomy within the Dutch Digitalization Strategy (NDS). Digital independence should not depend on a few individual projects but be part of a government-wide approach.
Elections and Digital Affairs #
Digital autonomy is not a technical issue but a political choice. Those who believe that government should manage its own systems and remain independent from foreign interests must invest in public alternatives. Take for example the International Criminal Court (ICC), which can no longer rely on big tech solutions. The ICC announced today that it will adopt the open-source alternative OpenDesk, the German counterpart of MijnBureau. That’s certainly good news, but it’s unfortunate that it wasn’t our own solution. To achieve that, much more investment in MijnBureau will be needed.
The Dutch national elections have just concluded. I’m very curious whether the new cabinet will, for example, opt for a Minister for Digitalization or the creation of a Digital Service. My vote, in any case, went to a candidate on the nerdvote.nl list. The coming period will be exciting. There are many positive developments in the field of open source and digital sovereignty, but we have to keep pushing them forward.
Thank you for reading.