Earlier this year, Gemeente Amsterdam (Municipality of Amsterdam) published its “Multiyear Digital Autonomy Strategy 2026-2035.” The document outlines the general strategy, the expected costs, as well as the detailed implementation plan for the first of the three phases (2026). In the short-term, Phase 1 has kick-started the mapping and classifying exercises that will lay the groundwork for upcoming migrations away from proprietary solutions, workspaces, and cloud operators to open source and partly or wholly Dutch-owned systems and entities.
To achieve digital autonomy in key services and systems, Amsterdam recognises the need for around 4.6 million annual investment. The municipality concedes that ”after years of reliance on all-in-one proprietary solutions (...), the organisation must now be made suitable for a more autonomous structure in a relatively short time.” The move comes at a time of increased public scrutiny of IT dependencies and data security in the Netherlands.
In January 2026, the Municipality of Amsterdam published its Multiyear Digital Autonomy Strategy (2026-2035). With this forward-looking framework, Amsterdam hopes to achieve full digital autonomy by 2035, becoming less dependent on large technology companies for digital services and products. As Alexander Scholtes, Alderman for ICT and Digital City puts it, the move ”reduces dependence on large non-European tech companies and limits the risk of non-European governments having access to municipal data or influencing the digital (infra)structure.”
The strategy, composed of three phases, represents a gradual approach to the switch, one that should guarantee continuity of public service. Thus, in Phase 1 (2026–2027) the municipality focuses on pilot programmes and system mapping, in Phase 2 (until 2031) it works on building up internal capacities and technical knowledge to achieve 30% digital autonomy, while by Phase 3 (until 2035), Amsterdam hopes to be fully digitally autonomous.
Crucially, the municipality recognises its role as a leader in the space and wants to ensure the sustainability and replicability of its strategy across other Dutch municipalities, with the approach dubbed a “peloton model.” This means the city is participating in inter-municipal and national initiatives, and setting an example on digital topics.
Gradual move towards autonomy
The ambitious digital autonomy plans have been a long time in the making. Over the past few years, the Amsterdam council has conducted extensive mapping exercises to determine its internal dependencies and IT capacities – like with the March 2024 Council Decision and the March 2025 Interim Report.
In May 2025, a group of council members tabled a series of resolutions calling for the municipality to halt its expansion of all-in-one proprietary services, and make concrete plans to divest from proprietary cloud solutions. One of the motions cited the “threat to Amsterdam’s independence and cybersecurity” posed by overreliance on non-European technology. Thus, over the course of this year, the municipality is implementing three pilot projects in its pursuit of digital autonomy.
Firstly, a group of around 150 employees will migrate to NextCloud, an open source collaboration platform, to test the functionalities of the alternative. The experiment should provide insights into preferred deployment methods (like using different platforms in parallel or as backup for one another), required functionalities, and the level of interoperability between different providers. The city hopes this will “allow [their] digital work environment to be designed more flexibly, which can result in both greater autonomy and potentially lower costs.” The Gemeente has initially contemplated migrating to the government-led MijnBureau office suite, but has opted for NextCloud due to its wider adoption and possibilities for intra-municipal collaborations.
Besides the open source office suite, the municipality is also exploring the possibility of buying data storage space from a Dutch or European alternative to proprietary content management systems. Moreover, the municipality is trialling a limited migration of several applications to the Logius Standaard Platform, a digital government service based on open standards. Logius runs on the central government’s data centers and hosts the national identity management platform DigiD, among others.
Security concerns in the spotlight
Digital sovereignty has become a hot topic in the Netherlands. Solvinity, the platform provider behind DigiD, came into the spotlight when the news of a planned acquisition by the US-based Kyndryl broke last November. Since DigiD is used by the vast majority of the Netherlands’ residents, the announcement sparked public backlash over fears of foreign government’s access to the residents’ personal data. Logius – which manages DigiD – remains the sole owner and developer of the application, but risk assessments are underway to determine whether the acquisition could jeopardise the safety of the users’ personal data.
On a local scale, the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) has also come under increased scrutiny over its public procurement strategies. The umbrella organisation, which unites around 90% of Dutch municipalities, assists its members in IT contract negotiations. The association is well aware of the risks associated with the dependency on non-European solutions, noting that “continuity (the US can cut off services), security (the US has the right to insight into data), and freedom of choice (municipalities can no longer leave their supplier) are under pressure.” Despite this, the VNG is pursuing negotiations with proprietary providers to prevent disruptions to municipal services. Gemeente Amsterdam, while pursuing its digital autonomy goals, is also being supported by the VNG in the negotiations over short-term extensions of its proprietary contracts. This reveals just how strong vendor lock-in effects are for local administrations.
Looking ahead
Amsterdam’s plans for digital sovereignty come at a critical moment for European public administrations, which are reckoning with decades worth of dependencies on foreign IT providers. The multiyear strategy stands out for its rigorous planning and incremental, pilot-based approach. By operating on a long-term timeline, the municipality has undertaken a fiscally prudent and measured approach to service migration that should minimise disruptions.
Photo by © Siebe Swart
