The Netherlands is building a new, Linux-based standard office desktop for government work, an effort officials describe as a push for “digital autonomy” after a 2025 episode in which the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor reportedly lost access to Microsoft email following U.S. sanctions.
The project, called DAWO, is already being tested by eight Dutch municipalities on retired laptops. But a first stable release isn’t expected until the end of 2027, according to reporting cited by Tom’s Hardware. DAWO is short for Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid, or “digitally autonomous government work environment.” It’s being built on NixOS, a Linux distribution designed to make system configurations reproducible across machines.
A Dutch Interior Ministry project, executed by three public IT providers
DAWO is being led by the Netherlands’ Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, and implemented by three public-sector IT operators: SSC-ICT, DICTU and DUO-ICT.
The mandate was issued in July by an interministerial commission focused on how the state functions, according to Dutch tech site Tweakers. That reporting was later picked up by It’s FOSS and then Tom’s Hardware on September 28, 2026.
The stated scope goes well beyond an operating system. The program is meant to cover the OS, office productivity software, collaboration tools, cloud storage and backups, IT administration tools, and AI.
Why NixOS: reproducible builds and support for older hardware
The technical choice is framed as operational rather than ideological. Nix, the package manager behind NixOS, installs each package into its own directory with immutable, signed contents, making it possible to rebuild the same configuration from one computer to another.
Rutger Putter, a member of the development team cited by It’s FOSS alongside Victor Gevers and Bram Buijs, said 80% to 90% of a configuration can be reused as-is from one deployment to the next.
A second practical argument: NixOS can run on machines that Windows 11 won’t support. The current DAWO trials are being conducted on decommissioned laptops.
Eight municipalities are piloting it; the code is public, but budget and timeline aren’t
Eight Dutch municipalities are participating in the pilot through the Association of Netherlands Municipalities. Earlier information had named four of them: ’s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch), Zaanstad, Ede and Amsterdam.
The code is published on the public repository code.overheid.nl under the MinBZK account, with repositories labeled DAWO and DAWO-NixOS. They are hosted on a Forgejo instance and mirrored on Codeberg for outside contributors.
The project’s official site does not publish a schedule or a budget. It lists five goals, including strengthening Dutch digital independence, improving security and data protection, and increasing traceability of government IT systems.
On timing, accounts differ: Tom’s Hardware reports the first stable version is expected by the end of 2027, while It’s FOSS described it as coming “next year.”
The 2025 trigger: ICC prosecutor’s Microsoft email access, and Microsoft’s denial
The catalyst was political. After a U.S. sanctions order dated February 6, 2025, targeting International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan, the Associated Press reported on May 25, 2025, that Khan could no longer access his Microsoft email.
Microsoft denied that it cut off the account. Company president Brad Smith said it was the court itself that moved the prosecutor’s email to the Swiss service Proton. The ICC did not publish an official version of events.
One later shift is not disputed: on October 31, 2025, the International Criminal Court confirmed it was dropping Microsoft Office in favor of the German suite OpenDesk.
What changes now, and what hasn’t changed yet
For cities such as The Hague and Amsterdam, the issue is no longer primarily the cost of software licenses, but the risk that a foreign decision could cut off access to essential work tools. DAWO is intended to reduce that risk by putting the technical foundation under national control and publishing its code.
In practice, the effort remains limited: eight municipalities out of several hundred are testing it on reused hardware; no central government administration has migrated; no budget has been made public; and a stable release remains more than a year away.
Tom’s Hardware also reported the Netherlands isn’t alone: Germany has already moved away from Microsoft systems, and Denmark and France have begun similar reviews of their technical foundations.
Status snapshot as of September 28, 2026
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Technical base | NixOS, with immutable and signed packages |
| Leadership | Ministry of the Interior, with SSC-ICT, DICTU and DUO-ICT |
| Municipalities in trials | 8, using decommissioned laptops |
| Reusable configuration from one PC to another | 80% to 90%, according to the development team |
| First stable release | End of 2027, according to Tom’s Hardware |
| Public program budget | Not published |
