Dutch railways NS under fire for shifting IT services to American provider

Criticism is coming from all sides following an announcement of Dutch state railway NS that it is changing its hosting provider of IT services from the Dutch telecom provider KPN to an American company. ‘This isn’t even a question of “no one else can do it”, because lots of parties are capable of doing this.’ Despite it being non-critical software, experts criticise the move since it increases reliance on the US for digital needs, which is already large in the Netherlands and in Europe. 

It concerns non-critical hosting, technical application management and chain management, something NS was already outsourcing, but to the Dutch company KPN. Now, it has chosen the American DXC Technology for the service, as first reported by newspaper NRC.  The contract lasts at least 6 years and up to 12 years, according to tech news website Tweakers.

NS emphasises that it only concerns ‘non-mission-critical’ systems that do not process personnel or passenger data. These important systems are still housed at a Dutch company. Some politicians have responded strongly to the news. Laurens Dassen (Volt) said in a response on Bluesky: ‘Will Trump soon be our train conductor? Trump’s tech bros manage our banks, our government, our social media, and soon our trains too. Incredibly naive. We need to move towards a Europe that runs on European tech. Volt is calling the minister to account.’

Dutch cloud companies sidelined

Hessel Dikkers, IT director at NS, said in an explanation of the choice for the American company, among other things: ‘NS is bound by procurement law and does not have the option of refusing or disadvantaging American parties on the grounds that they are American.’

Simon Besteman of Dutch Cloud Community (the trade association for the Dutch cloud and internet sector) calls it “unwise, naive, lazy, and also dangerous”. “The management and hosting of a technical platform on which NS’s internal applications run is the kind of work that 130 members of the Dutch Cloud Community do every day for large companies, governments, healthcare and financial institutions, and hundreds of European parties outside the Netherlands also have as their core business. This is not even a question of “No one else can do it”, because many parties can do this.”

‘Radical overhaul of tendering needed’

Chief Government Architect Francesco Veenstra is also unhappy with NS’s choice. He says on LinkedIn that it is about ‘the cheapest quote and not the highest score on quality; it’s a reality that occurs much more often in Dutch tendering practice. It sometimes leads to cheap but expensive purchases. It sometimes leads to the contracting of less desirable long-term contract partners and very often leads to mediocre quality.”

He calls for a “radical overhaul of the Dutch approach to public procurement in order to create a more resilient society with strong traditions of quality production”. “Procurement is not about buying cheaply but a cultural act of working towards the society of the future”.

‘Crocodile tears’

While the Dutch trade union FNV shares the criticism of the decision, it calls the ‘outrage’ about the situation ‘crocodile tears’. Union representative for the railway sector Henri Janssen said on LinkedIn: “The outrage over this decision by NS is loud, but it feels more like crocodile tears. Anyone who has treated public transport — and therefore also NS — as a market for years should not be surprised when market behaviour follows. NS is not doing anything unusual here. NS is doing exactly what the system requires of it: seeking the lowest point. It is logical and justified that FNV Spoor is strongly opposed to this. But let’s be honest: this is what politicians themselves have sown.”