Government Sets Framework to Reduce Dependence on Big Tech

By Netvora Tech News

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The Dutch government is set to introduce guidelines to reduce the country's unwanted dependence on large American tech companies. This move is aimed at promoting the development of a sovereign cloud and making a significant catch-up effort in Software as a Service (SaaS) services. This was revealed by State Secretary for Digitalization, Szabo, during a debate on the "Digitalizing Government". The discussion centered around the country's reliance on American cloud services and the need to break free from this dependence. "This risk management strategy will ultimately ensure that the ecosystem in Europe, and ideally in the Netherlands, will focus on providing more Dutch and European solutions, because that is simply safer for our national security and the protection of our personal data," stated VVD-Kamerlid Buijsse. According to Szabo, government agencies can assess the risk themselves and take into account the current political situation in their decision-making process regarding new migrations to cloud providers. "The government is also working to reduce unwanted dependence on a few major players. We will be introducing additional policy guidelines for this purpose. Our goal is to submit these guidelines to the Parliament by the summer," the official said. SaaS Catch-Up Effort Recently, the government announced that it must start building its own, sovereign cloud this term. "I think we're making good progress on PaaS and IaaS solutions, that is, platform as a service and infrastructure as a service," Szabo said. "As for SaaS solutions, which are used by citizens, businesses, and government officials, we need to make a significant catch-up effort. Once we have clarity on this, we will at least know where to focus our efforts," he added. According to Szabo, PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS are the three platform components that require attention. "SaaS needs the greatest catch-up effort," he emphasized. Moreover, Szabo noted that it is difficult to completely abandon American tech companies. He pointed to the situation in Luxembourg, which already has a sovereign cloud, but still uses American solutions. "They have a sovereign cloud, disconnected from the internet, but using American solutions. It's not the case that you can simply disconnect and no longer use providers from outside Europe," he said.