Dutch Government Builds an Open Alternative to Microsoft, Based on NixOS

The Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations is building an open alternative to the Microsoft-based workplace software that many government organisations rely on. The project is called DAWO, short for Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid (Digital Autonomous Government Workplace).

Four parts, replaced separately

The DAWO blueprint divides the workplace into four parts that are each developed and replaced on their own: AI, the operating system, the cloud and collaboration. The AI track collects open and verifiable AI building blocks, while the cloud track covers components for verifiable infrastructure.

For collaboration, DAWO points to Mijn Bureau and Nextcloud. Mijn Bureau is developed under the national Beter Samen Werken programme and bundles chat, documents, video meetings, spreadsheets, email, calendar and a wiki, along with a password manager and an AI assistant. The Dutch suite is an implementation of a European collaboration stack maintained with France and Germany.

NixOS as the reproducible base

The operating system layer is the most concrete piece. The DAWO-NixOS repository holds the code to build workstations automatically and identically on NixOS, a Linux distribution built around reproducible, declarative configurations. Settings are described as Nix flakes and organised into modules for boot, desktops, networking, programs and services, so a machine is assembled from shared building blocks instead of being tuned by hand.

The architecture notes describe a blocks-and-tiers model. A core profile enforces a mandatory security baseline (SSH, sysctl, usbguard, chrony, audit); critical settings are forced in the code so a local administrator cannot silently weaken them, and unsafe combinations fail at build time. A hardened tier with AppArmor and GNOME hardening stays opt-in.

Releases and community

DAWO-NixOS 0.1.0 appeared in June 2026, version 0.1.1 was rolled out at municipalities at the end of July, and version 0.1.2 became available in mid-August. A mobile variant is still in development. The blueprint lives on code.overheid.nl, the government-wide code platform, with releases mirrored on Codeberg. The community site lists five goals: digital autonomy, collaboration, security and data protection, innovation and verifiability, meaning government IT should be easier to inspect. Government, industry and open source work on the same blueprint, through code, documentation, pilots and events.