When the U.S. government imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, it also meant that its chief prosecutor lost access to Microsoft services, including email. It was then that the Dutch government decided that it was time to make plans that would reduce its reliance on software and services that were made or based in the United States. The result of that decision was DAWO, or Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid (Digital Autonomous Work Environment for Government in English). And work is underway to bring it to fruition.

As Tweakers reports, via It's FOSS, the program was aimed at refreshing the technologies used by the Dutch government in such a way that it would no longer be in a situation where it could lose access to critical systems at the whim of a foreign country. From operating systems to office software and cloud services, a new system had to be devised and rolled out.

That system is built around NixOS, with three service providers tasked with the job. While SSC-ICT, DICTU, and DUO-ICT were the three chosen, the whole thing is overseen by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.

From a technical point of view, the use of NixOS was a key one. Its use of the Nix package manager means that each package is installed in its own directory with immutable and signed contents. That alone means that the setup is incredibly easy to reproduce across multiple machines, something that is an obvious benefit when dealing with different facets of a government. It's been suggested that up to 90% of a configuration can be carried over from one deployment to another. And as a bonus, NixOS can also run on computers that Windows 11 would usually balk at.

While the switch from Microsoft software and services to brand-new alternatives is a long and complicated process, steps are very much being made in the right direction. Eight municipalities are running trial programs right now, with the first stable version of the platform expected to be ready by the end of 2027.

The Netherlands is far from the only European country to be concerned about the ability of the United States' government to cut off access to software and services. Germany has already jumped ship from Microsoft-based systems, while Denmark and France are also in the process of a similar rethinking of their tech stacks as the one carried out by the Dutch.

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Oliver Haslam has written about technology of all shapes and sizes for over 15 years, both online and in print. He's fascinated by how personal computing continues to change as tower PCs give way to foldable phones and beyond.

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Good for them as they'll be better off in the long run. This, all while the U.S. government and some corporations continue to grow in dependence of Microsoft as apps and services continue to be further integrated and consolidated:Reply

1) OS: Microsoft

2) ERP: Microsoft

3) Business Productivity ("Office") & Collaboration: Microsoft

4) Security: Microsoft

5) Cloud and AI: Microsoft

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If they are able to roll this out smoothly and then expand across institutions this should be a beneficial move. The key thing I would be concerned with is maintaining documentation and ensuring long term retention of people proficient in maintaining.Reply

From the US side of things this isn't good as it's an obvious loss of soft power, but when foreign policy is dictated by personal grudge this is what happens.

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Considering the cost of upgrading a non-compliant windows 11 computer to a new compliant one nowadays, that is an easy way out.Reply

Cheaper software management/maintenance + reliability + sovereignty improved, what is not to like?

Loss of productivity? Nope... when M$ upgrades their software you also have that, only you don't notice it.

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Any PC that is not Win 11 compliant is already almost a decade old. And, in govt or corporate world, due for replacement.Kindaian said:Considering the cost of upgrading a non-compliant windows 11 computer to a new compliant one nowadays, that is an easy way out.

Cheaper software management/maintenance + reliability + sovereignty improved, what is not to like?

Loss of productivity? Nope... when M$ upgrades their software you also have that, only you don't notice it.

8th Gen Intel was released in 2017, 9 years ago.

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I've been trying to ignore political news from America, but I had to balk at reading that they are sanctioning the International Criminal Court; isn't that the intergovernmental body that investigates war crimes committed by other countries? Why on Earth would they do that? That seems like a very odd organisation to target.Reply

Also I don't think forcing an entire country's government to move away from an American software company is going to help the US economy in any way, which I understand is meant to be the stated primary goal of the current administration?

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This is not first such EU-based move away from the US software stack. It is a reasonable continuation of the grass-root movement that has all the motivation to continue. With Gen-Z's IT literacy, there is a good chance to change the US stack dominance as they have not acquired own brand worship, besides Apple and TikTok.Reply

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ReplyI had to balk at reading that they are sanctioning the International Criminal Court; isn't that the intergovernmental body that investigates war crimes committed by other countries? Why on Earth would they do that?

You can find POTUS himself explaining the rationale for their decision at 30:42 in this video of the speech, he recently gave at the UN General Assembly in New York:

https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k17/k17vgtoa6m