In the Netherlands, around nine educational institutions appear on the sanctions list of the American state of Florida, because of their public statements on the atrocities committed by Israel. It has recently become clear that such a political situation could easily result in the digital infrastructure of an institution being shut down. This was made painfully clear in the Netherlands when a chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague lost access to his Microsoft email in May 2025. Through their dominant Big Tech companies, the United States and other non-European countries have quite suddenly gained a geopolitical instrument of power: technology.
Yet the vast majority of Dutch universities of applied sciences and research universities still rely on Microsoft services. Digital autonomy is of enormous importance in higher education too, and awareness of this is slowly beginning to grow. This panel addresses the obstacles, but above all the opportunities for institutions navigating this challenge.
At the table is Wladimir Mufty, Programme Manager Digital Sovereignty at SURF, the ICT cooperative for higher education and research. In April 2026, SURF launched a NextCloud pilot with 30 of its members, and is committed in many other ways to providing responsible ICT services to its members.
Among those members is the University of Groningen (RUG), which has publicly committed to achieving digital autonomy by 2030. How do they plan to get there? Data Autonomy coordinator and associate professor Oskar Gstrein of the RUG joins the panel to discuss this.
Finally, Quirine van Eeden will contribute insights from her three-part report on digital autonomy in public organisations, including courses of action for policymakers and procurement officers.