Slashdot relays a ZDNet report that the Netherlands’ Tax and Customs Administration has abandoned its planned Microsoft 365 public-cloud rollout, a decision aired at Open Source Summit Europe where the Linux Foundation released its 2026 State of Open Source in Europe survey finding that 94% of EU organisations consider digital sovereignty important and 61% very important. Roughly 5,000 employees had already migrated when the Dutch Advisory Council on ICT Assessment recommended reversing the rollout in June; the government paused it in July and has now replaced it with an on-premises and open-source approach. The assessment cited confidential documents routed through American servers, reliance on standard Microsoft encryption rather than Double Key Encryption, inadequate end-to-end encryption for Teams, vendor lock-in and the absence of an exit strategy. State Secretary for Finance Eelco Eerenberg told Parliament that mail and calendar move on-premises in 2027, with European open-source storage and collaboration following in 2027-2028; Microsoft Office stays for now. Other Dutch agencies are building DAWO, an open-source work environment that would start by replacing Windows with NixOS.
Dutch Tax Authorities Cancel Microsoft 365 Cloud Rollout, Turn Toward Open Source
Slashdot relays a ZDNet report that the Netherlands' Tax and Customs Administration has abandoned its planned Microsoft 365 public-cloud rollout, a decision aired at Open Source Summit Europe where the Linux Foundation released its 2026 State of Open Source in Europe survey finding that 94% of EU organisations consider digital sovereignty important and 61% very important. Roughly 5,000 employees had already migrated when the Dutch Advisory Council on ICT Assessment recommended reversing the rollout in June; the government paused it in July and has now replaced it with an on-premises and open-source approach. The assessment cited confidential documents routed through American servers, reliance on standard Microsoft encryption rather than Double Key Encryption, inadequate end-to-end encryption for Teams, vendor lock-in and the absence of an exit strategy. State Secretary for Finance Eelco Eerenberg told Parliament that mail and calendar move on-premises in 2027, with European open-source storage and collaboration following in 2027-2028; Microsoft Office stays for now. Other Dutch agencies are building DAWO, an open-source work environment that would start by replacing Windows with NixOS.
Source: Slashdot