A Conversation with Mark Vermeer, Digital Government Director at the Netherlands' Ministry of the Interior
Edition #83 The Digital Government lead at the Netherlands' Ministry of the Interior talks algorithm safety, values-driven policy and building a Dutch LLM...
By even the high standards of Northern and Western Europe, the Netherlands has for a long time been one of the mainstays of the digital government scene. Consistently ranked in the top 10 of the UN eGovernment index - and making global headlines for its government’s bold approaches to working with the private sector – the country is certainly beating its own digital path.
Things have not always been so straightforward along the way, however. Back in January 2021, two months before the general election in the Netherlands, the entire cabinet of Prime Minister Mark Rutte was forced to resign after a flawed algorithm wrongly accused 25,000+ parents of falsely applying for Child Benefits. A parliamentary enquiry found that this algorithm had violated “fundamental principles of the rule of law”.
For many administrations, rebuilding trust in digital government after such an event might be a daunting task. But sitting down with Mark Vermeer, Director of Digital Government at the Netherlands' Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, he is keen to impress from the off that the government has risen to the challenge in making significant progress on algorithm regulation. “We’ve improved a lot of things” specifically related to algorithm regulation since 2021, he tells me, “putting in place controls, developing an algorithm framework; and building an algorithm chapter into our data protection authority”. Today, “all government algorithms that have a high impact on people’s lives are published in an algorithm register”, overseen by a watchdog to control for the biases or flaws that might cause the kind of failure seen back in 2021.
Values-driven digital policy, and a commitment to radical transparency
But it is equally clear that the Dutch government’s approach to safety and accessibility goes beyond algorithm monitoring. Former Dutch Digital Minister Alexandra van Huffelen’s national Work Agenda talks about a digital policy that is “open and driven by public values in its actions (including professionalism, integrity and transparency)”, and Vermeer and I quickly pick up on this idea of a values-driven approach to policymaking. Within the Dutch government, he says, digital is treated as a policy matter – akin to something like climate change – rather than a function of operations. It is a recurrent theme throughout our conversation, and the key thing he thinks that other countries could learn from the Dutch.
Practically, this means a striving towards greater citizen control over how the government uses data and digital, what Vermeer calls “replacing government logic with citizen logic”. The national digital strategy talks about “every citizen being in the driving seat of their digital lives”, an example of which includes citizens having control over “the data used when it comes to making decisions in government”. Through the government website GegevensbijBesluiten.overheid.nl, citizens are able to see what data the government holds about them, and who is using it for what purpose (a similar approach to Moldova’s Cabinet system).
On a similar note, there is an active attempt to promote the use of open-source software within the government. In a recent interview with GovInsider, Vermeer described how an Open Source Programme Office is currently considering the adoption of an “open, unless” policy, which will mandate that agencies share information and source code with citizens. There is a sense of a positive reinforcement loop: not only do values inform Dutch digital policy, but there is the hope that these values will in turn rub off on broader digital society. As Vermeer put it in that interview, “when it comes to traditional e-government, the Dutch are doing pretty well. But the change we’re making is impacting digital society as well”.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the development of the country’s own open-source language model, GPT-NL. The LLM – which Vermeer tells me is “developed according to Dutch languages, values and culture” – is a collaborative effort between the Dutch government, private sector, and educational institutions. Trained on Dutch data, it is designed to be used as “a virtual facility accessible to partners for data and expertise” in fields like security, health, education and government services.
It is a bold move, one that pits the Dutch government against providers like OpenAI, after previous disagreements with the likes of Facebook and Google. In announcing the new Dutch LLM, the Netherlands AI Coalition criticized ChatGPT, saying that OpenAI “are not transparent about the algorithms and data sets used, making it impossible to audit them or hold them accountable for possible unethical or harmful results”. In contrast, they wrote, “there is a growing need for a strong Dutch-language LLM that complies with […] regulations in the field of privacy and ethics, is transparent about the algorithms and datasets used, and adheres to Dutch cultural norms”.
The ambition is not, Vermeer tells me, to do away with the private sector, but to reimagine the Netherlands’ relationship with it. “We do see at a local level initiatives to improve collaboration with tech suppliers”, he tells me, “trying to improve in the way that the likes of Estonia has gone” – which is to say, using the private sector to help build a coherent common ground between local governments with infrastructure like a data exchange layer. In a heavily decentralized country, with 4 layers of government, it is clear that Vermeer – the former CIO of the city of Rotterdam – has a point.
Building a Dutch digital future
Alongside GPT-NL, Vermeer’s team is also beginning to introduce AI-powered tools into the Dutch government such as Codi, an AI-driven policy assistant. Today, thousands of questions are submitted to the government every year, with answering them an extensive task involving thousands of civil servants. According to a Dutch government press release, Codi is able to draw from dozens of official government sources to “turn this unstructured data into meaningful and valuable information”, using “advanced language models and machine learning” to “parse, structure and enrich data” in helping these civil servants respond much faster.
In being one of the first European countries to introduce such a tool, there are clear risks for the Dutch government in terms of safety and accountability. But, with a values-driven approach behind him, Vermeer is confident in AI’s potential. When you look at AI from the perspective of government, he says, there are two options. “Firstly, you can stay away from it all because of the magnitude of the risk”, or “you can work out what kind of digital world you’d want to live in and build policies around that”.
Looking ahead then, Vermeer is confident about the role of AI in the Netherlands’ future, and its precedent across Europe more broadly. “We’ve just seen the new AI act, which I hope will be as influential as GDPR”, he tells me, reminding me that some 75% of the world’s population currently lives somewhere where GDPR rules lie. interweave previously interviewed Italy’s Mario Nobile and Slovenia’s Emilija Stojmenova Duh, excited about their own ambitions for the use of AI in government, and indeed they may have something to learn from Vermeer and his team.
As we look ahead to the future, it looks bright for the Netherlands’ relationship with digital government. In 2022, 90% of the Dutch population aged 16+ said they use e-government services. Today, that number is likely to be even higher, with Vermeer highlighting “good infrastructure, and people that are relatively digital literate” as key contributors to this widespread use, as well as the values-driven approach. Today, “everyone grows up using identity services, and from early on in their lives can make use of tools and contribute to the digital building blocks”.
Going forward, digital will no doubt become even more central to Dutch values, not just an operational feature or even a policy area, but the platform for government itself.