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loupol | on: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform
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 ?

Freak_NL | parent | next
It's an unfortunate Dutch way of doing things. The firm believe that the market will solve it if you have a contract that says thing will be solved. Write a tender, pick the cheapest party, trust in contracts, hope it won't break before you (the external contractor pushing for it) move on in a few months time.

The people who pointed out that none of the moving parts of DigiD should have been outsourced were ignored until the tide shifted this year.

I'm honestly surprised the government decided to intervene. The usual method is to keep on believing in the signed piece of paper until the shit hits the fan (like with the Fyra high speed trains) — never mind that the US (where the buyer is from) is not likely to give a toss about those pieces of paper if they need something from our data.

speleding | root | parent
It's important to add the context that whenever our government tries to do something by themselves it ends up late and severely over budget.

So you have to weigh the risks of outsourcing to the risk of the whole thing becoming very late and very expensive. The risks around outsourcing are something further down the line, the risks of everything becoming expensive and late are something that will give the responsible politician a headache now.

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

They did, and they moved to block the acquisition of the local company handling it. What's unclear in the article?

foresterre | root | parent | next
The "local" company is already UK owned though, so at most "European", not national or EU.

What I find strange is that the Dutch government does have its own datacenters, e.g. ODC-Noord (1), but they're still looking to outsource the hosting even after the current contract ends in 2027.

(1) https://www.odc-noord.nl/

tweetle_beetle | root | parent
I suspect that most government departments see data centers as a liability and are very happy to outsource to the big providers, apart perhaps from the ones hosting stuff they don't really want you to know about.

It's always better to be able to blame a supplier for something going wrong if you're a senior leader or politician. For some reason, if it does happen no one has to resign.

There is loads of UK Critical National Infrastructure on AWS, probably Azure too. And the Home Office put up £10 million tender to shut down an old data centre not that long ago without a confirmed replacement - https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/018193-2024

somewhatgoated | root | parent
They didn’t

> Currently, DigiD is partially managed by Solvinity, a company owned by a British investor

Britain is neither local nor in the EU

pyrale | root | parent
The company is incorporated in the netherlands, and the workers are there. The corporate structure means the shareholder can't do whatever they want.

I don't see why they should bother with who invests in it, when they have the power to do what they just did and block the acquisition.