The Tax and Customs Administration, Customs and the Benefits Agency are switching to Microsoft 365. Outgoing State Secretary of Finance, Eugène Heijnen, informed the Lower House of Parliament of this.
"The Tax Administration first developed and carefully weighed a number of alternative scenarios. These showed that none of the alternatives examined could offer the same level of functionality, security, continuity and efficiency in the foreseeable future as the initial scenario for making the switch to M365," writes the minister's wife in her parliamentary letter.
It concerns only the office automation, explains the state secretary. "The applications and data storage within the primary processes for taxation and collection will continue to run in the on-premises environment from the Tax Authority's self-managed data center in Apeldoorn."
Bert Hubert, an independent tech expert and former AIVD supervisor, is unapologetic about the Tax Office's decision to switch to Microsoft 365. "They know everything about everyone," he stresses. "What you earn, how many children you have, whether you are sick. It's one of the fiercest data collections in the Netherlands. And they are now choosing an American cloud environment precisely for that." According to Hubert, it is not important that data and copies are kept in the Netherlands: "As soon as you start working with that data in the Microsoft services, Microsoft can access it."
Click here for the parliamentary letter from State Secretary Eugène Heijnen.
