// ITS FOSS — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
The Netherlands Built a Nix-Basd Linux Desktop Because Microsoft Cut Off the ICC
When the U.S. government imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in early 2025, the consequences were far-reaching yet quickly enforced.
The restrictions cut off the ICC chief prosecutor's access to Microsoft services, including email, followed by a freezing of his personal and institutional bank accounts in affected jurisdictions.
While this was happening, the Dutch government was watching, coming to the bitter realization that access to essential services depended on decisions made in the U.S.
Hence, their response to this is DAWO, short for Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid, or Digital Autonomous Work Environment for Government in English.
It is a framework that looks to tackle the government's digital stack, covering the OS, an office suite, collaboration apps, cloud services, IT management tools, and AI, with all of it being built around a NixOS foundation.
The DAWO initiative became an official government mandate in July, when the Interdepartmental Commission for Government Business Operations (ICBR) issued a directive for a standardized, sovereign digital work environment.
The three major IT service providers of the Dutch central government, SSC-ICT, DICTU, and DUO-ICT, are tasked with executing this major undertaking.
Development is handed by a team that is associated with the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK), with some notable people like Victor Gevers, Rutger Putter, and Bram Buijs being named.
Nix, the package manager NixOS is built around, handles configuration through its own functional programming language. Each package installs into an isolated directory with immutable, signed contents.
That makes a working setup reproducible across machines. For a rollout spanning dozens of agencies, that reproducibility adds up, resulting in substantially less repeated configuration work that would cost time and money.