Dutch government retracts plan to host VAT administration in US cloud
5 hours ago
- #government outsourcing
- #data security
- #digital autonomy
- A Dutch State Secretary partially reverses outsourcing of VAT collection to US firm Fast Enterprises due to risks.
- The VAT software will remain American, but management and servers will be handled by Dutch Tax Administration staff.
- Confidentiality of data and continuity of service risks were not sufficiently mitigated.
- Increased dependency on US companies and criticism over moving civil servants' workplaces to Microsoft cloud.
- The State Secretary is reconsidering keeping workplace software on own servers, citing recent market developments.
- There are about 3500 ICT employees managing 900 systems, with relatively high in-house control compared to other government departments.
- Aims for more software developed and managed by in-house ICT staff, without additional budget.
- AI tools (likely non-European) can be used to speed up development.
- Ambitions face challenges, such as expanding own data centre due to electricity grid capacity issues.