Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform

nltimes.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 114 posts

Re: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform

#41

Post by foresterre »

pyrale wrote: post #32
loupol wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

> 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?

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/

Re: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform

#42

Post by arjie »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #5
deafpolygon wrote: post #3

What's wrong with the government taking over admin of DigiD? I just don't understand why the government won't consider funding it. It's a public infrastructure service at this point.

For some reason the government isn't willing to pay software developer salaries. It would rather pay a company to pay them instead.

That's a logical thing for governments to do. Governments are under pressure on different axes than the companies they contract to do things. Governments switching contracts won't ever make the news, but it's much harder for them to fire people in order to take advantage of increasing efficiencies. Likewise, they cannot short-term employ people easily without this structure.

Re: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform

#43

Post by jfyi »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #35

Good luck with digital id. Not gonna play along. No matter what.

I knew a fellow with the same idea about government id of any form. No driver's license, no social security card, no state id.

To say the least, he made some pretty serious compromises in life. He was a tattoo artist with no shop and effectively homeless when I knew him, if you were curious.

Anyway, sometimes the world moves on without you.

Re: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform

#44

Post by ur-whale »

lyu07282 wrote: post #26
ur-whale wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with the government taking over admin of DigiD? Because they're a government and they are therefore going to fuck it up.

Unfortunately you will never realize how this ideology is fucking up every facet of society and which interests that are never your own put a momentous effort into drilling that propaganda into your head.

> that propaganda

Not big on evidence-based thinking, are you?

Re: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform

#45

Post by boricj »

carlosjobim wrote: post #25
boricj wrote: post #13

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.

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.

For France it certainly is, probably because of our stubborn focus on strategic autonomy. For example, offshoring passport printing to me sounds like a great opportunity for identity theft and document forgery by people outside of your jurisdiction.

I do kinda get the China customs system example though, only because if corruption is bad enough that it's a greater concern than opsec, then you're kinda hosed anyways.

Re: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform

#46

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

ur-whale wrote: post #14
deafpolygon wrote: post #3

What's wrong with the government taking over admin of DigiD? I just don't understand why the government won't consider funding it. It's a public infrastructure service at this point.

> What's wrong with the government taking over admin of DigiD? Because they're a government and they are therefore going to fuck it up.

the netherlands is far from perfect but unless you have a specific grievance with their government, you really have no idea how much better it can be. it's night and day when compared with places like the united states. things can be better even though it feels impossible sometimes.

Re: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform

#47

Post by boondongle »

boricj wrote: post #13

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.

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.

Re: Dutch gov't will only allow European company to operate DigiD platform

#49

Post by SlinkyOnStairs »

deafpolygon wrote: post #3

What's wrong with the government taking over admin of DigiD? I just don't understand why the government won't consider funding it. It's a public infrastructure service at this point.

One important note: It's not the admin of the system that's in question here, that is government ran.

The company in question only provides cloud services, and has no access to any data.

> I just don't understand why the government won't consider funding it. It's a public infrastructure service at this point.

It has been 9 years since the last centrist ("purple") government in the Netherlands. 24 years since the last left-wing led government. Nothing more to it.

It's just decades of Neoliberal "outsource government tasks to the free market" policy. There really isn't any other reason; The Dutch government has multiple divisions which are quite good at IT. It could choose to do so at any moment, it just doesn't.

Voters just didn't care. The system worked fairly reliably. So they just kept voting for a very charismatic politician, regardless of the long term consequences.

Post reply on HN