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

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

#71

Post by speleding »

Freak_NL wrote: post #55
speleding wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Outsourced stuff is late and expensive too, just not directly the responsibility of the minister or secretary of state because of the magic piece of paper in between. IT is hardly something we need to do occasionally, so build up a department that can do it (not just write up huge reports about what it should do and outsource, like Logius) and invest in the people that will work there (retaining them as much as possi…

I agree that the government should do IT in house, ideally, because it's a core business for them. The reality is that it is very hard to attract and retain good IT staff on a government salary. The people who need to manage all that in a cost-effective way are especially hard to find.

So we end up with expensive consultants doing the work. Consultants have the wrong incentive. They don't want to stay in one place to long because it looks bad on their resume and overruns mean more money for them.

So really, I can see why a seasoned politician chooses the safest option for him. By the time an overrun occurs he will have moved on to the next job. I don't think left or right-wing politics has much to do with this dynamic. How will a left-wing politician magically get capable IT staff that higher paying industry can't even get enough of?

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

#72

Post by consumer451 »

dgan wrote: post #69
consumer451 wrote: post #67

Here is my naive take on sovereignty, and how everything should work in the new "USA decided to kill its own dominance, and attack its allies" world. The world is now balkanized, let's live in that reality. 1. Almost every country has amazing universities with software tracks. A big issue is that universities often don't prepare their students for the real work, aka making and supporting products. 2. Governments shou…

I ve had exactly same idea for many years now, but apparently that's not as obvisous to others Developing new software? Universities! Maintaining/migrating old software? Universities! IT counseling and advise? You won't believe it ... Unive okey i stop here you got the point

SV VCs have been Stanford's biz dev team. Every country should use that as a template.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

pembrook wrote: post #60
Y-bar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work (and always has) in the private sector and we can be even better at ending up over budget and be even later at delivery. I don’t believe for a moment that the government has a monopoly on underachieving!

The problem isn’t public or private, it’s incentives. If the private company is granted a defacto monopoly, it doesn’t matter that they’re a “private” company, they will have the same incentive and accountability problem. What we know for certain though: Government taking over something is definitionally a monopoly and 99.99% of government employees are not subject to the accountability mechanism of elections. Histor…

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by flexagoon »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #7
flexagoon wrote: post #4

Why is DigiD even a product that needs constant maintenance? From my experience using it it's just a pretty simple authentication/data sharing system. Every oauth provider has something similar. Why is it a whole separate product that is owned by some company?

Any network service with 24x7 availability and millions of users requires constant maintenance. Hardware has some lifetime and needs to be maintained and replaced. OS needs patching. Dependencies need security updates and, time to time, migrations to next major LTS update. Sometimes new requirements come from regulatory, that need development of new features. The skill set needs to be maintained. Support requests nee…

Of course, I understand why some maintenance is required. I just don't get why there is apparently a big maintenance burden over something that is usually a single small feature of a service

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

#75

Post by consumer451 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #70
consumer451 wrote: post #67

Here is my naive take on sovereignty, and how everything should work in the new "USA decided to kill its own dominance, and attack its allies" world. The world is now balkanized, let's live in that reality. 1. Almost every country has amazing universities with software tracks. A big issue is that universities often don't prepare their students for the real work, aka making and supporting products. 2. Governments shou…

>The goal of every country should be to foster a sovereign software flywheel The very simple economic problem with this is that autarky does not increase aggregate output . Saying "I will do this myself", always requires the qualification "at the expense of what else that I'm not doing?" The adaption to a reality of a balkanized world for small countries is, like Singapore does successfully, triangulate between large…

When your previous major ally now threatens to destroy your country, and system of government, new compromises need to be made.

We are all in for a wild ride in the coming years. Many adjustments will need to be made. Those who adjust fastest will come out on top.

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

#76

Post by themafia »

boricj wrote: post #52
jasonvorhe wrote: post #35

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

When you are interacting with the government for official business, what purpose is there to hide one's identity? You can't exactly not fill in your name in your tax return. For the non-government/private business however, it is indeed a matter of privacy. France rolled out a while ago the requirement to establish the user's age when accessing porn sites. I refuse to do that.

> what purpose is there to hide one's identity?

I'm not hiding it. It's on a plastic card that I paid the government to print for me. I'm happy to let them see that anytime they ask in relation to official business or legal concerns.

I do not want this ID to be digital, attached to any devices, or available for inspection outside of my control at any point in time.

> You can't exactly not fill in your name in your tax return.

I just sign them with ink. The same I do with any other contract or agreement. Surprisingly those contracts are just as valid as the tax bill I receive every year and yet no digital anything was ever involved with them. They're fully analog and yet fully enforceable by law.

> France rolled out a while ago the requirement to establish the user's age when accessing porn sites.

If you give them an inch they will take a mile, or perhaps, if you give them a centimeter they will take a kilometer. I couldn't care less if the government is somehow inconvenienced by analog privacy. I do not perceive any personal benefits from having my ID be "digital."

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by techcode »

speleding wrote: post #54
Freak_NL wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

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…

Expat/kennismigrant here - it's same "ends up late and over budget" for literally every country (and private businesses).

What Dutch government/politicians seems to be "ahead" compared to other countries - is combination of narrow or short sightedness and (over)correction trough rules, laws and regulations.

Like giving subsidies and tax breaks for electrical cars, rooftop solar panels and mandating household switch from gas (LPG and such) to electric heating and cooking. And ignoring industry professionals for decades saying the distribution network won't scale.

More of the same with stuff like 30% tax rule for expats, which was originally introduced as cost saving measures because actually doing bookkeeping for expatriate expenses was costing government more money. But then more recently expat tax breaks have been reduced and phased out "because cost saving". Meanwhile employers have trouble finding highly skilled workers. And we're limiting numbers of foreign students in universities (by forcing them to do it in Dutch instead of English).

Some Bulgarians cheated/defrauded Dutch tax returns or such - and "solution" was ML/AI reviewing things - but it turned out to be broken/biased and (ab)used for other things - leading to the whole toeslag scandal and government resigning.

Same for nitrogen vs lack of housing... And many more.

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

#79

Post by boricj »

lucumo wrote: post #63
boricj wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> For France it certainly is, probably because of our stubborn focus on strategic autonomy. You're seeing people wake up to the threat now, with the opposition against Kyndryl and the Nexperia thing. Somewhat more controversially, I'm also worried about the French government owning large parts of the Dutch defense industry through Thales and Airbus. (And, to a lesser extent, German and Spanish governments.) Very litt…

The days of nationalized French defense companies and state arsenals have been over for quite a while. Assuming I didn't make any mistakes:

GIAT was privatized, then renamed to Nexter, then merged with German KMW to form European KNDS and now it's about to do an IPO.

All of the French aerospace industry (including missiles) bar Dassault and Thales is inside Airbus.

Arquus was bought by Belgian John Cockerill.

I could probably cite more if I dug deeper, but while we still have French defense companies like Dassault, Naval Group and Thales, a fair amount of our defense industry is no longer exclusively French owned.

And if the French government or owner starts getting uppity, you could always take a page from the Swedes and how they Kockums the shit out of ThyssenKrupp.

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

#80

Post by amaccuish »

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.

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

Whilst I still agree with your premise that this is not wise, I should point out that, for example UK passports, whilst produced in Poland, are personalised in the UK. Not that that helps the UK case since the personalisation is done by Thales...

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