Unanimous House wants government and education to jointly tackle big tech monopoly

The government should work together with universities of applied sciences and research universities to break the dependence on American tech companies. That was the message of a unanimous House of Representatives to education minister Moes.

Dependence on American tech companies is high on the political agenda. Big tech can suddenly cut off access to its software, as happened to the International Criminal Court earlier this year. Many people are worried about that.

On Tuesday this led to a widely supported call to outgoing education minister Gouke Moes: as a government, you should work with universities to tackle dependence on big tech. All one hundred and fifty MPs voted in favour of the motion.

Breaking dependence

Minister Moes already said last week during the debate on digitalisation and higher education that he is not opposed to this. But now he will have to get to work. The House wants the government to look more often at European alternatives. And higher education institutions could help with that.

Universities are ‘already taking steps to break this dependence through cooperation and joint procurement processes’, say GroenLinks-PvdA and D66, the parties that tabled the motion. The government should therefore ‘structurally’ work with the education sector to jointly reduce dependence on big tech.

Nextcloud

A day before the House voted on this, SURF announced that it wants to run an extensive trial with German office software. The IT cooperative of education and research institutions wants around two thousand students and staff to spend a year emailing, typing and video calling with Nextcloud. This software can take over several tasks from Microsoft.

Bought up

But two weeks ago it became clear that the playing field is not entirely level. American tech companies can easily buy their European competitors. That threatens to happen, for example, with Solvinity, a successful Dutch company that helps manage the security of DigiD.

Jacquelien Scherpen, rector magnificus of the University of Groningen, therefore said last week that European alternatives must be protected from the acquisitiveness of American companies. “We must ensure that the independence we are fighting for does not slip from our hands again.”

Public transport

On Tuesday, the House also backed a request to minister Moes to talk to public transport companies about the multi-million-euro cut. The ministry is a major customer of NS and regional carriers because of the student travel card paid for by the ministry. Now that students are using it less often, Moes wants to cut 225 million euros.

But what are the consequences for public transport companies? Will regional carriers get into financial trouble? Last week, Moes referred the House to his colleague at Infrastructure and Water Management, but the House doesn’t accept that.

Left-wing parties supported the call from GroenLinks-PvdA. In the end it won a majority thanks to JA21 and Forum for Democracy. They also agree that the minister must first examine the consequences of his cut, ‘before irreversible decisions are made’.