CW+ Premium Content/CW EMEA

The public cloud market has seen huge developments over the past decade, with the Covid pandemic being an important accelerator. Cloud services have become more reliable, and are currently used by large numbers of citizens and businesses. The security of public cloud services has increased, and the large-scale deployment of updates and patches makes it far easier than before to fix errors in software. For these reasons, it was due time to revise the National Cloud Policy 2011. The new policy allows Dutch government departments to use public cloud services. “Public cloud services offer an appealing perspective for the development of a more innovative, transparent, flexible and efficient digital government,” State secretary for digitisation Alexandra van Huffelen wrote to the Dutch Lower House. “Low initial costs and pay-per-use make the public cloud a transparent solution. “Moreover, the risks are now more manageable than before, due to large investments by public cloud providers in securing their services. This is much more than...