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boricj | on: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform
As 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.
Aaargh20318 | parent | next
DigiD is a government project. It's owned and operated by Logius, which is a government-owned entity.

Logius outsourced the hosting and infrastructure to Solvinity.

loupol | root | parent
That's a bit better but it shifts the question:

Why did they not mandate national (or at least EU-based) hosting and infra ?

It feels a bit insane in retrospect for such a critical digital service ?

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boondongle | parent | next
Most National governments embraced globalism and free market solutioning. It worked both ways.

American Federal Systems also have European and Indian operators but it gets more restricted depending on what part of the system you're dealing with. Even then, the operators get it wrong.

Many "American" firms are being served by Irish, Bulgarian, and Dutch operators for example. When you get to Fedpod, the restrictions are usually tiered, not all or nothing. It's why US firms got caught with Chinese handling data.

The question isn't should Europe and even America clean it up - it's how much is legitimate national soverignty and how much is going to be straight mercantilism in the Cloud/SaaS sector.

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navane | parent | next
I'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 | parent | next
As 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 | root | parent
I’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 | root | parent
I’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.

yxhuvud | parent | next
Governments are not the only players needing working digital id, and sometimes banks are faster to build it.
spockz | root | parent
Banks have nothing to do with DigiD. There is eidas which allows you to attest your identity using a bank.
carlosjobim | parent | next
The entire customs system of all of China used to be run by European foreigners. Not because of Western imperialism, but on invitation from the Chinese rulers, as a measure to combat corruption.

Some European countries right now have their currency printing and their passport printing outsourced to foreign nations.

These things aren't too unusual.

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outside1234 | parent | next
Probably because it is wildly expensive to have a government directly run any tech project.
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