A significant milestone has been reached: Het Ontwerp (The Design) has been published for public review. Establishing a sovereign government cloud requires broad engagement from government bodies, the market, and knowledge institutions. Transparency is essential to sovereignty, and Het Ontwerp sets out the vision for the sovereign cloud service.
Meanwhile, the design has also been realised as a Proof of Concept (PoC). Following the Status Update on the Exploration of a Sovereign Government Cloud Service (Dutch), submitted to the House of Representatives before the summer, this marks the next milestone for the NDS Cloud priority. View Het Ontwerp and its appendices (Dutch).
What, how, and why?
Het Ontwerp was developed through broad collaboration among provinces, municipalities, water authorities, public service providers, implementing organisations, and the national government. It outlines the sovereign cloud service’s structure and core benefits, with a primary focus on technology. Governance, funding, and procurement will be addressed in a subsequent phase.
The design elaborates on the technological choices outlined in the exploration phase, including ‘a container platform compliant with the Haven standard, a government-wide sovereign cloud service at the infrastructure (IaaS) level, based on open-source technology, designed to be as sovereign as possible, hosted in a government data centre and focused on mid-category applications’.
The goal is to broaden knowledge of the sovereign government cloud. The exploration phase opted for a scenario in which building internal expertise within the government is a priority. The review aims to contribute to this, with results feeding into further decision-making and progress reports.
Review process for Het Ontwerp
Market parties, government organisations, and knowledge institutions are invited to submit their reviews (Dutch). Each organisation (or department) may submit 1 review.
Feedback events
Feedback sessions are being organised for the target groups: market, government, and knowledge institutions, to provide further clarification on Het Ontwerp and the PoC:
- For government: 24 September. Register here (Dutch).
- For market: 28 September – Register here (Dutch).
- The date for knowledge institutions and other target groups will be announced as soon as possible.
Follow-up: Open Dialogue with industry
This publication and public review build on the earlier Open Dialogue with the industry. While the feedback events focus on technical aspects, the programme aims to continue the dialogue on non-technical topics related to cloud services. To this end, a market consultation is planned for September, which will be opened via TenderNed (Dutch).
Public release of Het Ontwerp
View Het Ontwerp and its appendices (Dutch).
