Digitisation belongs at the heart of the new Dutch government’s agenda

Lack of urgency

Although the Netherlands is a global leader in the field of digitisation, it can’t afford to take that status for granted. Complacency appears to have diminished the sense of urgency regarding ongoing investment in digital innovation, with important basic choices not being made. Meanwhile, other countries are actively working on digitisation and creating favourable conditions for growth, meaning that the Netherlands is losing ground. What’s more, geopolitical developments are highlighting undesirable and dangerous dependencies, which need to be addressed by building up our digital autonomy.

Government needs to engage with digital developments

Because digitisation touches on every sphere of life and various important public interests, it’s important that the government engages with digital developments. A clear long-term vision encompassing both society as a whole and the government’s own electronic services is vital in that context. Market players then know where they stand when considering distant-horizon investments. Having defined its vision, the government needs to communicate that vision clearly and consistently, and to direct progress towards it. Risks and dependencies should be explicitly addressed by government policy and, where necessary, mitigated by means of public-private partnerships. Dependency on big tech services is a good example of the topics that the government needs to look at. Others include the rise of AI, the growing impact of online abuse and cybercrime, and the distribution of misinformation and disinformation. We also want autonomy, but without data centres. What are the interrelationships between those issues? And what about the lack of capacity on the electricity network?

Of course, inclusion in long-term policy proposals also has a significant bearing on what digitisation can achieve, and its potential to serve as a means of addressing the societal challenges that we face. Challenges such as the inevitable aging of our population, our progress towards sustainability, the associated problem of network congestion, the (cyber-)resilience of our society, labour market shortages and the need to make our educational system more future-proof.

General election

On 29 October, the Netherlands goes to the polls to elect a new parliament. Amongst the current members of the Standing Committee on Digital Affairs, there appears to be consensus regarding the need to build up our strategic autonomy by promoting Dutch and European technologies. And regarding the associated need to invest in related research and infrastructure, with the government setting an example and using its central purchasing power to, for example, encourage the Dutch business community to innovate in fields such as cloud services. Another point that committee members agree on is that we have to look critically at the impact of social media algorithms and introduce clear legislation and supervision for new AI applications. It remains unclear, however, whether such digital issues are regarded as political priorities outside the Standing Committee.

Digitisation must be on the new government’s agenda

SIDN believes that digitisation must be at the heart of the agenda of whatever government is formed following the upcoming elections. Whether that implies appointing a Minister for Digitisation is ultimately a technicality. The keys to success are management, resources, a mandate and persistence. As a member of Digital Infrastructure Netherlands, SIDN provided input to various political parties while they were formulating their manifestos. As a sector, we argued for reinforcement of the Netherlands’ role as a digital hub by means of, for example, investment in the nation’s aging undersea cable infrastructure, including the infrastructure serving our overseas territories, and in research centres such as AI factories and quantum computing facilities. We also made concrete proposals for increasing the Netherlands’ strategic digital autonomy, and suggested how the government can reduce its dependency and regain control over sensitive public data and essential public services. We would also like to see greater emphasis on cyber-resilience, and have therefore proposed using part of the increased NATO norm for that purpose. Finally, we have called for the new government to look at long-term safeguarding of the internet’s public core. That core includes the open protocols, standards and technical infrastructures that underpin the reliability and interoperability of the global internet. As well as (the right to use) end-to-end encryption. Although the principle of the public core is integral to the Netherlands’ existing policy and international cyber-strategy, it requires constant protection against the (geo)political, commercial and other forces that threaten an open, free, secure and accessible internet.

Bite-size pieces

Open strategic autonomy was defined in 2023 by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the Agenda for Digital Open Strategic Autonomy (DOSA). That document speaks of the EU’s ability, acting as a global player in collaboration with international partners, to assure public interests in accordance with its own views and preferences, and to be resilient in an interconnected world. As the operator of the .nl domain, one of the biggest country-code domains on the global internet, SIDN is a strong believer in an interconnected world and in cooperation with international partners. After all, those are the foundations on which the internet’s success has been built. It is therefore simplistic to expect Dutch governmental and other organisations to utilise only Dutch or European technology, certainly in the short term. Not only is it the case that, as a consequence of the technological disadvantage that has developed, the local options available to organisations are lacking in certain respects, but also such an inward focus is at odds with the principle of international cooperation that underpins the DOSA. What undesirable dependencies actually exist, how have they come about, and what do we no longer have control over? What exactly is needed to reassert such control, and how can we do so collectively? It is important to identify the material risks associated with the outsourcing of services, and to put mitigating measures in place where necessary, translated into (tested) exit strategies. At the same time, we must strive for the adoption and further development of open-source software and open standards in order to avoid vendor lock-in. Conformance to interoperability and data-portability criteria should also be mandated. In short: the issue should be divided into bite-size pieces that are individually resolvable, preferably within the lifetime of a single full parliament.

Collaboration

SIDN calls on the new parliament and its reconstituted Standing Committee on Digital Affairs to work with the independent non-profit organisations at the heart of the Netherlands’ digital infrastructure. Together, we can then develop a vision and a plan for tackling the challenges set out above, on the basis of collaboration and expert knowledge.