US Sanctions Push the Netherlands Off Microsoft and Toward NixOS

When the US government imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, a side effect was that the court's chief prosecutor lost access to Microsoft services, including email. That episode convinced the Dutch government it was time to reduce its reliance on software and services made or based in the United States.

The DAWO project

The answer is DAWO — Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid, or "Digital Autonomous Work Environment for Government." As Tweakers reports (via It's FOSS), the program aims to refresh the technologies used across the Dutch government so that the country can no longer be cut off from critical systems at the whim of a foreign state. Everything is on the table, from operating systems to office suites and cloud services.

The new environment is built around NixOS. Three service providers — SSC-ICT, DICTU, and DUO-ICT — have been tasked with the job, while the whole effort is overseen by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.

Why NixOS

The choice of NixOS matters technically. The Nix package manager installs each package in its own directory with immutable, signed contents. That makes a setup remarkably easy to reproduce across many machines — an obvious benefit when dealing with different arms of a government. It has been suggested that up to 90% of a configuration can be carried over from one deployment to another. As a bonus, NixOS also runs on computers that Windows 11 would ordinarily reject.

Moving from Microsoft's software and services to brand-new alternatives is a long and complicated process, but steps are being taken. Eight municipalities are running trial programs right now, with the first stable version of the platform expected by the end of 2027.

The Netherlands is far from the only European country worried about Washington's ability to cut off access to software and services. Germany has already jumped ship from Microsoft-based systems, while Denmark and France are rethinking their tech stacks much as the Dutch have.

Source: Hacker News