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Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform
- tosti 3mo agoIDK what it's like now, but DigiD used to be 2 racks in a separate cage. Even if you can access the floor, you're not getting physically near the servers.
- deafpolygon 3mo agoWhat's wrong with the government taking over admin of DigiD? I just don't understand why the government won't consider funding it. It's a public infrastructure service at this point.
- AndrewDucker 3mo agoFor some reason the government isn't willing to pay software developer salaries. It would rather pay a company to pay them instead.
- tokai 3mo agoIn most cases its illegal to set up something inside the public org. It needs to be put out as a public offer. It's part of New public management pushed by neoliberal interests.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- victorbjorklund 3mo agoBullshit. Its not illegal.
- moi2388 3mo agoIt often is. Above a certain value you need EU wide bidding. Post and trains already had to be privatised since them being government owned was deemed anti competitive by EU standards
- victorbjorklund 3mo agoWhich law are you claiming is about all govt it systems? Note this is not about trains or shit. This is about govt it system.
- tokai 3mo agoPlease do a minimum of research before you call some one out on bullshit.
- victorbjorklund 3mo agoQuote the law that says it is illegal.
- arjie 3mo agoThat's a logical thing for governments to do. Governments are under pressure on different axes than the companies they contract to do things. Governments switching contracts won't ever make the news, but it's much harder for them to fire people in order to take advantage of increasing efficiencies. Likewise, they cannot short-term employ people easily without this structure.
- meeshmuesh 3mo agoI think there's a reasonable argument to be made that if the civil service doesn't have a decent amount of technically proficient people on staff, that they can't know what's possible - You just end up with a hollowed-out political class that has no idea what they're out-sourcing, and can't learn lessons post-project.
- pjmlp 3mo agoIn some countries that is a dream job. The public servant benefits in vacations, work hours, health support, plus an above average salary as highly educated technician.
- ur-whale 3mo ago> What's wrong with the government taking over admin of DigiD? Because they're a government and they are therefore going to fuck it up.
- lyu07282 3mo agoUnfortunately you will never realize how this ideology is fucking up every facet of society and which interests that are never your own put a momentous effort into drilling that propaganda into your head.
- ur-whale 3mo ago> that propaganda Not big on evidence-based thinking, are you?
- lyu07282 3mo agoIt's strongly ideological-based thinking to believe your government need to pay for the profit of some investor in another country in order to do anything, because if they did it themselves they just "fuck it up". It's your taxes being redistributed to people that tell you this is just evidence-based, technocratic thinking and without alternative. Then you see the infrastructure around you falling apart and get angry when you hit a pothole - why are you paying so much taxes for nothing, let's cut them we start at those corporations are paying...
- GuinansEyebrows 3mo agothe netherlands is far from perfect but unless you have a specific grievance with their government, you really have no idea how much better it can be. it's night and day when compared with places like the united states. things can be better even though it feels impossible sometimes.
- SlinkyOnStairs 3mo agoOne important note: It's not the admin of the system that's in question here, that is government ran. The company in question only provides cloud services, and has no access to any data. > I just don't understand why the government won't consider funding it. It's a public infrastructure service at this point. It has been 9 years since the last centrist ("purple") government in the Netherlands. 24 years since the last left-wing led government. Nothing more to it. It's just decades of Neoliberal "outsource government tasks to the free market" policy. There really isn't any other reason; The Dutch government has multiple divisions which are quite good at IT. It could choose to do so at any moment, it just doesn't. Voters just didn't care. The system worked fairly reliably. So they just kept voting for a very charismatic politician, regardless of the long term consequences.
- flexagoon 3mo agoWhy is DigiD even a product that needs constant maintenance? From my experience using it it's just a pretty simple authentication/data sharing system. Every oauth provider has something similar. Why is it a whole separate product that is owned by some company?
- ivan_gammel 3mo agoAny network service with 24x7 availability and millions of users requires constant maintenance. Hardware has some lifetime and needs to be maintained and replaced. OS needs patching. Dependencies need security updates and, time to time, migrations to next major LTS update. Sometimes new requirements come from regulatory, that need development of new features. The skill set needs to be maintained. Support requests need to be served. Law enforcement may ask for some data. Add to this hard digital sovereignty requirements: continuity of service must be guaranteed for decades. All this requires quite a special setup in which commercial entities are rather tolerated than welcomed, but they may still make more sense than a government agency so constrained by budget process that they cannot hire any decent engineer.
- flexagoon 3mo agoOf course, I understand why some maintenance is required. I just don't get why there is apparently a big maintenance burden over something that is usually a single small feature of a service
- ivan_gammel 3mo agoDigital ID is in no way just a „single small feature of a service“, but even if it would be so, for every tiny thing there exist 10x more requirements that make it a product.
- juliusceasar 3mo agoFinally taking the digital threath from USA, Israel and China serious.
- 28304283409234 3mo agoYes.. their days of not taking the threat seriously certainly have come to a middle.
- fidotron 3mo agoWhen EU ID is needed for Eurovision voting we can all act surprised by the change in rankings.
- Freak_NL 3mo ago“This year's Eurovision winner: Tommy, Käärijä, and Joost, the Euroboys!” “Huh. Israel hardly got any votes this year.”
- tapland 3mo agoI'm getting spam and harassment from accounts promoting Israels eurovision contestant, on IRC, in 2026. It's every year and probably on all newer socials too.
- westmeal 3mo agoNo wayyyy what are they saying?
- tapland 3mo agoSome just link Israels submission urging channel members to vote for it. Some join and casually but randomly for the channel bring it up "are you guys watching Eurovision this year?" asking what people's favorites are and saying Israel is their favorite (always ends in name calling when someone says Israel sucks or isn't their favorite). If this isn't automated id love to hear from the people behind it some time. Nice feeling relevant on irc in TYOOL 2026
- ChrisArchitect 3mo agoRelated: Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48278406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48278406
- markus_zhang 3mo agoWhat if this European company decides to contract out its job to other continents?
- masfuerte 3mo agoThen they'll be in breach of contract. Lots of government contracts have a "no outsourcing" clause.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- boricj 3mo agoAs a French person, I'm confused as to why DigiD is not a government-run project like FranceConnect is. I'm even more bewildered that an American company thought that they could take over the national identity management system of an European country, as if this was business as usual.
- navane 3mo agoI'm mostly bewildered that the Dutch government was ok with that, and it took way too much effort from the opposition to get them to pivot on this.
- irdc 3mo agoAs a Dutch person, I'm not. Dutch administrators are traditionally wary of doing anything themselves that they could conceivably outsource to a commercial party. That also results in endless swarms of locus^H^H^H^H^Hconsultants feeding on our taxes. I hate it, but what can you do, this is sadly what people here keep voting for.
- spockz 3mo agoI’m unaware of this kind of topic ever being one of the points in election time. This as opposed to topics like animal welfare. Sovereignty is only now becoming more visible as a votable topic. Sadly, I don’t know of a way to influence how our government practices IT. Except maybe to work for Logius. And even then there will be the topic of funding.
- microtonal 3mo agoI’m unaware of this kind of topic ever being one of the points in election time. IT sovereignty may not have been a topic during elections, but it should be clear to anyone now that the VVD (political party that has been in most governments in the past decades) is a revolving door. When given a choice, they will always prefer letting the market do it/deregulate. This is not limited to IT. Banks, insurance companies, gas companies (Shell), etc. is where they work before they go into politics and/or work after they leave politics.
- hesus_ruiz 3mo ago[dead]
- jasonvorhe 3mo agoGood luck with digital id. Not gonna play along. No matter what.
- hhh 3mo agoWhy? It’s been around in the netherlands for a while and it’s extremely convenient, basically just functions as SSO for government apps.
- jasonvorhe 3mo agoI don't care much about government services. The less I deal with them, the better. I can file my stupid taxes using some certificate that was sent to me by mail, that's enough for me. What else would the government have to offer? If I move I'll show up at some local entity, get my passport updated and I'll never think about it again until next time I move.
- hhh 3mo agoTaxes, health insurance, medical records, updating business registrations, pension, pharmacies, university programs, mijnoverheid (the like government message box where you get digital copies of any mail that would be sent to you)
- jfyi 3mo agoI knew a fellow with the same idea about government id of any form. No driver's license, no social security card, no state id. To say the least, he made some pretty serious compromises in life. He was a tattoo artist with no shop and effectively homeless when I knew him, if you were curious. Anyway, sometimes the world moves on without you.
- jasonvorhe 3mo agoI have a passport. Once digital becomes mandatory I'm ready for the scenario you described.
- 3mo ago
- gbraad 3mo agoFinally. But now they want NL Wallet to use Google and Apple accounts for login, so this is happening again.
- microtonal 3mo agoThere is hope: Thank you for raising this issue. We are aware that our current implementation does not yet work on GrapheneOS. This is a temporary situation we plan to resolve before this app goes public. https://github.com/MinBZK/nl-wallet/issues/34#issuecomment-4606325215 https://github.com/MinBZK/nl-wallet/issues/34#issuecomment-4... Until then, I'd recommend every Dutch person (or probably every EU person, since this could also influence other wallets) to upvote/heart the initial request in that issue to show that there is serious demand for this.
- shevy-java 3mo agoPlot twist: the data will still be stored outside of the EU - the magic of cloud computing. :D
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- consumer451 3mo agoHere is my naive take on sovereignty, and how everything should work in the new "USA decided to kill its own dominance, and attack its allies" world. The world is now balkanized, let's live in that reality. 1. Almost every country has amazing universities with software tracks. A big issue is that universities often don't prepare their students for the real work, aka making and supporting products. 2. Governments should greatly favor products created by the students of their own universities. The goal of every country should be to foster a sovereign software flywheel. Anything else seems pretty darn silly.
- dgan 3mo agoI ve had exactly same idea for many years now, but apparently that's not as obvisous to others Developing new software? Universities! Maintaining/migrating old software? Universities! IT counseling and advise? You won't believe it ... Unive okey i stop here you got the point
- consumer451 3mo agoSV VCs have been Stanford's biz dev team. Every country should use that as a template.
- Barrin92 3mo ago>The goal of every country should be to foster a sovereign software flywheel The very simple economic problem with this is that autarky does not increase aggregate output. Saying "I will do this myself", always requires the qualification "at the expense of what else that I'm not doing?" The adaption to a reality of a balkanized world for small countries is, like Singapore does successfully, triangulate between large countries, specialize what you're good at, be pragmatic and flexible and strategically neutral which makes big powers compete for you without drawing hostility, rather than trying to become 'sovereign', which makes you poor and a target.
- consumer451 3mo agoWhen your previous major ally now threatens to destroy your country, and system of government, new compromises need to be made. We are all in for a wild ride in the coming years. Many adjustments will need to be made. Those who adjust fastest will come out on top.
- ergocoder 3mo agoWhy not just dutch company? There are European countries that are obviously pro-russia...
- pyuser583 3mo agoYeah seriously if ADF gets elected do you cancel German contracts?
- seymores 3mo agoIt's wild how untrustworthy USA is now.
- dopidopHN2 3mo agoWhy do you think its wild ? I find that easy to understand and grounded in facts.
- pyuser583 3mo agoOk fine. In the long run nativising has limits. A good model is 5g WiFi: trust the foreign dumb parts and provide your own smart parts. But that requires excellent state capacity. Specifically intelligence sharing with domestic regulators- which many countries struggle with. At the the end of the day, the processors won’t be designed locally, and trusted computing is quite rare.
- hulitu 3mo agoLike ... Crypto AG. /s