New role, who dis

July 28, 2025

I have an exciting update to share! As of today, I’ll start as the Interim Lead of the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in The Netherlands. 🥳🇳🇱

In Dutch this translates to ‘Kwartiermaker’ at the OSPO BZK. This post is about why this is such a cool assignment, even if temporary.

My experience As I’ve written in a previous post, I was once allowed to build a fully free and open source IT environment for an international non-profit. That experience shaped how I see tech, autonomy, and public infrastructure. Since then, I’ve stuck around in the FOSS world. I’ve mostly been a user and advocate of open source projects. I’d love to contribute in code, but unfortunately I’m not a very good developer. So I’m happy to be able to help out in other ways – by making space for it in public institutions.

The bigger picture This role comes at an interesting time. Across Europe, there's a growing realization that relying on proprietary Big Tech for our core digital infrastructure isn’t sustainable. Governments are starting to see that critical processes such as email, documents, communication, identity management, etc, are deeply entangled with proprietary platforms they neither control nor fully understand.

We’ve already seen what happens when public institutions lose control over their digital foundations. In the Netherlands alone we have examples like when the ICC’s Chief Prosecuters’ email was blocked by Microsoft, or how the CLOUD Act gives US authorities access to data stored in Europe by US companies, or Broadcom trying to extort the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management with an 85% price increase on VMware licensing, or the most recent Citrix hack that has forced the Public Prosecutor's office to work offline for weeks. These aren’t abstract risks anymore. Even the Dutch Court of Audit has reported that our government is becoming too dependent on a few foreign cloud providers, posing serious risks to digital sovereignty, security, and control.

Open source went from being novel apps built by devs in their free time, to something that might save orgs money, to now being integral to protecting digital sovereignty on a national level. It’s about time that EU governments are becoming aware of the capture of their IT and start looking towards alternatives. There needs to be a shift toward digital autonomy.

What I’ll be working on There’s a lot happening already. I’m super excited to be involved with projects like:

Advocacy An important part of this role is advocacy. Within government, I’ll be advising on the implementation of the “open, unless” policy, which means that software and data should be open by default unless there’s a reason not to. The OSPO also works on embedding open source thinking into broader policies and strategies, like the newly published Dutch Digitalization Strategy (NDS). Even though it isn’t explicitly named in the NDS, almost every pillar can be linked to open source.

Beyond policy advice, I want to keep pushing for structural support (aka funding). If we rely on open source tools in our public infrastructure, then we should be investing in building and maintaining them. Germany is already doing this with its Sovereign Tech Fund, and I think The Netherlands should follow suit. We can’t build digital autonomy on volunteer labor alone. I’m looking forward to conversations with policymakers and civil servants to help shift the narrative around FOSS from niche to necessary.

Connect I’ll be working closely with some great people from the opensource community, and I’m looking forward to seeing familiar fediverse faces at events like Public Spaces and the upcoming Open Source Summit 2025 in Amsterdam.

If you’re in the same space or just curious, feel free to follow me for updates. I’m always happy to chat about FOSS in government or cool things being developed. 🙂

Thanks for reading <3