Municipalities—especially smaller ones—rarely have their own cloud team. Much of their IT is outsourced: through SaaS providers, through shared arrangements that manage Microsoft 365 and Azure environments, and through application partners who are responsible for their own tech stack. That works well enough for existing systems. But for new initiatives, a modern data platform, or applications that fall under Common Ground or Haven+, this situation is insufficient.
Haven and Haven+: not just a checkbox, but a requirement
Anyone who wants to run applications that process citizens’ personal data is increasingly dealing with Haven and Haven+. These are the frameworks that determine whether a cloud platform is suitable for the Dutch public sector. These are described in the Dutch central government’s public documentation. For municipalities that are serious about achieving digital autonomy, this is a relevant consideration: there are very few options that are both technically mature and meet the requirements for the public sector.
Of the cloud platforms currently considered suitable, only a handful qualify. Cyso’s cloud environments meet the Haven and Haven+ requirements.
The benefits of a managed approach
For municipalities without their own cloud team, a managed model is often the most pragmatic approach. Not because they relinquish control, but precisely because they can maintain it more effectively. The municipality determines the architectural choices, manages IAM at the policy level, and bears ultimate responsibility for privacy and security. A managed cloud partner handles the operational execution: the platform runs, incidents are addressed, and the infrastructure scales accordingly.
At the Data Expo, xxllnc will present a real-world case study in which an entire municipal environment was migrated from a U.S. provider to Cyso Cloud. Not a pilot environment, not a proof of concept, but a full production environment. This serves as a relevant benchmark for municipalities wondering whether such a transition is technically feasible and what it requires of the organization.
The honest nuance
Some municipalities have reservations. And rightly so. European cloud providers are not on par with the major U.S. players in every area. For AI initiatives, for certain managed database services, and for tools like Microsoft Fabric, Azure has a real advantage that shouldn’t be dismissed.
But “Azure is more mature” is not a reason to run every workload on an American provider. The question is which workloads require that and which do not. A data platform with BSN data, an application for the Basic Registration of Persons, an environment for internal case management: these do not need to run on Azure and sometimes require a different hosting environment.
Smart municipalities make distinctions. They make conscious choices: we’ll build this on a platform that complies with Haven+, we’ll keep this within the shared service arrangement, and we’ll host this on a European provider. That’s not an ideological choice, but a risk assessment.
At the exibition
During Data Expo, on September 9 and 10 at Jaarbeurs Utrecht, Cyso and xxllnc will address precisely these questions. Using xxllnc’s real-world case study and insights from discussions with municipalities, we’ll discuss what digital autonomy requires in practice: which choices you can make right now, which steps are for later, and what a realistic migration path looks like.
Are you an information manager, data specialist, or CIO at a municipality, and do you recognize the challenges described above? Stop by, or contact us in advance at contact@cyso.com.
This blog post is a contribution from Cyso, a specialist in cybersecurity and digital infrastructure. Cyso helps organizations secure their infrastructure and applications through an integrated and proactive approach. For more information, visit www.cyso.com or visit Cyso at Data Expo.
