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ramon156
brodo
NLnet is also a great Dutch initiative. It's great to see that smaller, more nimble countries are leading the way in Open Source and digital independence.
RyJones
One of the projects I work on, OWF, has great engagement with our open source efforts from Dutch companies and NGOs.
ramon156
Awesome! Did not know this was a thing. Will check it out
thaumasiotes
> I was wondering this morning whether they were going to migrate away from GH.
In the context of other commentary today with various people migrating off of github...
is there an event prompting this, or were you thinking of it more in the general vein of European governments trying to reduce dependency on American services?
ramon156
You're on the money. They already were discussing moving away from america-dependent infra. We already had a Microsoft-involved power-move a few years ago that resulted in dutch government emails being blacklisted. I was just wondering why they would stay on GH.
I expected them to use GitLab because its older and dutch, but I'm glad they opted for forgejo.
olafmol
Correction: Gitlab is not Dutch. It has a Dutch co-founder, and was a B.V. for about one year before moving to the US and become an Inc. The original founder is from Ukraine.
brnt
> partijgedrag
So happy to see they're ingesting voting data again! They stopped a few years ago (which is also a few elections), which I thought was such a shame. Knowing what representatives actually do, and not just promise, is really the only thing that matters.
ramon156
Elwin had some trouble with getting the API going. I ended up helping out, but I was in a big time crunch at the company I was working for at the time.
That's vastly different now, so I want to take a look at how we can properly do ingestion. Currently it's an ETL that is pretty flakey, even with tests. The backend-frontend is also a mess, wondering if we can just go vanillaJS without the mess that is pgtyped/prisma. I'm kind of wondering if we can use ATProto too, but I'm not too familiar with it.
Elwin is also looking at municipality-independent instances (this is less about code and more about communicating with municipalities). They all want money, which is fair, but we're not sponsored or funded anywhere. Supporting this is fruitful thinking on our side.
The code is still on my gh [0], but i might make an org on codeberg for this and mirror to this back to gh
rollyboo
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miki123211
Public voting data isn't always a good thing.
On one hand, it makes representatives accountable to the public, which is good. On the other, it heavily encourages voting among party lines, and makes lobbying a lot easier (as the lobbyists know whether the representatives voted the way the lobbyists wanted). This effectively moves the heart of government from the representatives themselves to lobbyists and high-level party officials.
It's a bad idea in the same way letting you photograph your ballot and upload it to social media is a bad idea; there's a reason most democracies disallow that.
HardlyCognizant
That just means the forms of lobbying being permitted are antithetical to democracy, and is just bribery in a different form. The problem is with the lobbying, not the accountability.
youwangd
Show HN timing matters more than people think. Monday-Thursday, 9-11am Pacific, is when the front page has the most engaged readers. Weekend posts get less competition but also less engagement.
ivolimmen
I am Dutch and I am glad they finally started to do some open sourcing. I have worked at different governmental bodies and have been promoting open source for some time now. But as a simple 'added hands for hire' I never got any response to my pleas. I guess it's typical Dutch that we are one of the last to do so.
embedding-shape
I am living in Spain, and from my point of view, Netherlands is one of the ones doing the most for FOSS in Europe today! It sees much faster real-world adoption of FOSS in ministries and municipalities than other countries, the government seems eager to fund FOSS (again, compared to other countries) and generally be welcoming to the ecosystem. Browsing around, there seems to be lots of FOSS projects funded by money coming from the Dutch state.
Kind of interesting how the perspective is so different from the inside! Maybe it's the typical "the grass is always greener..."?
starefossen
Norwegian Government has a couple of thousand open repos for their code https://norwegian-public-organizations.vercel.app/
Most notably the Labor and Welfare Administration with 3000+ open repos.
embedding-shape
Yeah, also pretty dope! Sweden also basically spearheads the whole "open data" thing for a long time too :) Too many great stuff happening across the continent to just say one or two countries are doing everything, in that you're right.
whinvik
Funny that its hosted on vercel. Probably because its employee driven rather than top down. Saves all the bureaucracy to get someone to sign a budget item to buy a domain.
mcsolid
This is cool (and on Vercel too)
oever
This map shows that the Dutch municipalities are nearly all in the Microsoft cloud.
RetroTechie
Cool map!
Another data point: I've visited public libraries around Friesland province. They all use catalog + internet facilities which look & feel the same across libraries: a browser (Mozilla) + office suite, PDF reader, files can be saved locally put don't persist between user sessions.
This would lend itself perfect for a Linux-based setup: netboot (from per-building local file server or NL-based cloud), read-only filesystem, LibreOffice etc.
But alas: the setup is Windows-based (running on Intel NUC or similar), office suite is Microsoft Excel/Word/PP. Completed by Acrobat PDF reader. No doubt it's at least able to leak telemetry and/or user data if Microsoft were to feel like it (or asked/forced to do by US gov).
touwer
Love it! All European countries should have one
michelb
Not sure. I think Germany and France are way ahead?
embedding-shape
Yeah, probably if you asked me for "Top 3 countries for FOSS in Europe" I'd pretty much say France, Germany and Netherlands, hence me saying "is one of the ones" :) Compared to the rest of the countries, those three probably do way more than all the rest together.
rglullis
NLNet is funding open source projects to the tune of tens of millions of euros per year, and it is Dutch.
rollyboo
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oever
The government still plans to place the authentication system of all Dutch citizens in USA hands.
And interestingly, code.overheid.nl runs from a residential ip address.
QuantumNomad_
> And interestingly, code.overheid.nl runs from a residential ip address.
That’s not what I’m seeing.
IP address is currently 147.181.37.238, which is assigned to ODC-Noord via RIPE.
ODC-Noord is a data centre for national government organisations according to https://www.odc-noord.nl/
oever
code.overheid.nl points to 62.59.196.156 which is in the Odido ASN.
Checked with `host`, `dig` and hosting-checker.net
hvb2
> The government still plans to place the authentication system of all Dutch citizens in USA hands.
That's not a fair characterization. The company that runs it might be bought. That's not planning to put it in USA hands
oever
The sale could be stopped by government. The ID system might be moved to a different company. The government could by the part of the company that hosts the ID system. None of these measures are being taken.
The result is that the information needed to log in to all the important government systems becomes subject to American jurisdiction. Foreign agents will be able to authenticate themselves as any Dutch citizen and act on their behalf.
moi2388
It is a fair characterisation. They can access the data, as their data protection officer warned about, it hereby falls under US law, they have to give data when requested, and can shut it down at any time.
sigio
It's an ODIDO ip, but from the old versatel block. I'm assuming it's a business netblock, not the typical ftth/dsl range.
martijnvds
Traceroute goes through `.ftth.glasoperator.nl` routers though.
sigio
Also worked for the dutch government for the last 5 years. All or most of the projects we did have been open-sourced on github over the years. Currently there are plans to move them to code.overheid.nl I think, though I no longer work there currently. (I was the github org-admin for the department)
Mashimo
> https://code.overheid.nl/RegelRecht/regelrecht
> Machine-readable Dutch law execution. regelrecht takes legal texts, encodes them as structured YAML, and runs them as deterministic decision logic. The engine takes a regulation and a set of inputs, evaluates the decision logic, and returns a result with a full explanation trail
Can someone explain this to me? Not the technical aspect, but rather a user story or use case, maybe with example. I can't really wrap my head around it. Thanks in advanced.
embedding-shape
Probably better entry point is https://regelrecht.rijks.app/ and you can see an example of the YAML and outputs here: https://editor.regelrecht.rijks.app/library/afstemmingsveror...
As for the use case, it seems to be an explorative exercise to see if something like that can help provide more transparency and consistency within systems of law, "whether machine-executable legislation can provide an answer" to complex and opaque cases. The websites linked earlier have more information + examples.
fenykep
I read (with much hope in my heart) it as: all the combined rent laws say that the max rent in X district is 5€/mo/sqm but you can charge 20€ for windowcleaning services and 1€/mo/sqm extra if the flat has an ikea bedframe and a bathtub. You enter the parameters of your rental agreement and the magic box spits out wether your situation is legal or not, then you just have to press a button to sue your landlord.
Bringing the boring old legal system closer to smart contracts.
But I don't have a clue if this is really the case.
Bewelge
I think that's the project.
"Modern calculation engine as a building block for the entire government. In collaboration with the Benefits Service (Dienst Toeslagen). Can we develop a general calculation engine for the government? This project explores how such a system could help in executing complex regulations for citizens and businesses, for example, when calculating benefits."
arionhardison
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vasco
I imagine if a new law is introduced or a change to an existing law is proposed it can auto-check for consistency, collisions with other laws, auto-flag laws that need to be amended together or things like that.
Tangurena2
If such a thing exists (or could exist), I'm certain that my state government agency would benefit greatly from it.
vasco
All that is needed is political will, if then all subdepartments implement the same thing you could even have practical policies be auto-flagged that need to be updated when a law changes with instant suggested updates to some form people need to submit, etc. This whole government apparatus could be much simpler.
arionhardison
[flagged]
arionhardison
[dead]
luplex
In Germany, we have the similar portal https://opencode.de (no relation to the coding agent)
It's built on Gitlab and does everything you need your git to do.
They also provide hardened base container images at https://container.gov.de
andai
Maybe the government should be in charge of critical infrastructure. That seems like a very sensible idea to me.
I think that also includes the operating system and the app distribution channels, though. Right now it's just a fiefdom. Not sure how that's solvable. There's no world government — for better or worse!
ra
Maybe governments should be in charge of their own critical infra; I'm happy with as much non-government controlled software as possible.
regexorcist
Great project, seems off to a good start with its first HN hug of death. Meanwhile GitHub greets me this morning with the banner "Don't worry if you have missing PRs at the moment, data isn't lost".
arjunthazhath
Its pretty hard to build and provide a service or product to government. The adoption rates are low imo!
theNailz
Dark mode is a straight up nightmare with dark purple text on a dark background.
Gina020
It's being worked on, will be improved soon: https://code.overheid.nl/MinBZK/Codeplatform/issues/15.
embedding-shape
Interesting that they apparently deployed a development version of pre-release v16 of Forgejo, rather than the stable v15, wonder why that is? Don't get me wrong, I love bleeding-edge software as much as the next hacker, but seems wild for something like a central hub for publishing software.
gib444
The Dutch have a very different approach to risk than many other cultures. Eg I was watching a TV programme about lots of works at the central railway station in Amsterdam and barely anyone was wearing a hard hat. In the UK that would be unheard of, especially on a TV programme
And if something went wrong they would fully admit to them being wrong and fix it
brianwmunz
This is interesting. Reminds me of the W3C traceability work a few years back that I was briefly involved with... main focus was defining agreed upon vocab for interoperability across supply chains. Never thought of the same approach being used for public policy, but it's an interesting idea... politics is an area where clear communication and definition is important. That said, vocab tends to change way less than public policy does, so amendments and revisions seem like they'd be tough to manage?
helsinkiandrew
Forgejo was discussed here last year:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753523 (269 comments)
pcoyne
Is it common for government to use open source software? Here even just trying to hire someone to manage that would be hard so you almost have to outsource
ramon156
I cannot speak for other countries, but Germany, NL and Belgium have been pretty supportive of open-source
gl0wa
gov.uk have been pretty big on open source https://github.com/alphagov
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Proud dutchie here! I was wondering this morning whether they were going to migrate away from GH. Really glad that they did.
I remember applying for a job (at some weird company) to be put up as an open-source contributor for the dutch government last year. The idea was that I was going to build on top of MuleSoft stuff. They ghosted me a day later, despite me having already done these things for the client they needed me for. I would advise anyone that is looking for OS contributors to not out-source them through companies, as the models don't really align.
Nowadays I'm communicating with people in Utrecht to get partijgedrag to a newer level (the current one is kind of weak). I would love to build some tooling on top of our government APIs, as well. I don't think people realize how much internal tooling is being built with the idea to release them to the public. It's really cool to see.