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.
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.
It might be cheaper but that’s not why they should do it. The problem is that reliance on US technology for core government services is a vulnerability, practically as severe as relying on another country for your power generation or your military infrastructure (don’t look at the NATO countries lol). They run the risk of being shut out of their own core operations because of US sanctions.
Bickering over contracts I don’t think is serious barrier to building independent cloud infrastructure. The EU already does collaborate on common software implementations, being integrated economically.
The EU Commission do seem to be interested in open-sourcing. All of this may be a pipe dream depending on politics, like I said before — it depends on the political courage to see it through. Some countries like NL may be very interested in digital sovereignty, but it might be hard to convince the other member states who have gone all-in on US dependence.