Best Technology Stuff from Around the World
Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, wants to build a large data center in Zeewolde. Those plans have been discussed for a long time, but until now it had not been officially confirmed which party is behind the plans. The zoning plan for the data center has been approved by the Municipal Executive … Read more
The blockade on the Facebook account of the Breda city council was lifted on Thursday evening. The account was suddenly blocked on Tuesday. It is still not clear why the account was blocked. At the beginning of this week, the Facebook account of the Breda City Council was suddenly blocked. According to the registrar who … Read more
The Facebook page of the city council of Breda has become inaccessible to the city council and users since Tuesday. Facebook has not yet given a reason for taking the page offline. The clerk of the Breda city council says that he has contacted BN DeStem with Facebook and is waiting for an assessment. The … Read more
The city council of the German city of Dortmund will switch to open source software as much as possible in the future. Moreover, from now on she will have to prove why open source software is unsuitable if she chooses alternatives. This move is stated in the German city’s political policy memorandum for the period … Read more
Complete mailboxes of administrators and officials of the municipality of Almere have disappeared because archiving the mailboxes turned out to be too expensive for the municipality. This is apparent from email exchanges between the municipality and ICT supplier Fujitsu, owned by Omroep Flevoland. The contents of the mailboxes of alderman Julius Lindenbergh and former mayor … Read more
The Flemish government will help Flemish municipalities to protect themselves against cyber criminals. The plan includes an audit, toolkit and a package of pen tests. The plan follows after ransomware that shut down the municipality of Willebroek for five days. Testing the systems of the municipalities seems to be the main part of the plan. … Read more
The new software to calculate election results will not be ready before the 2021 parliamentary elections. The current Electoral Council will supervise the tendering of new voting software under the new name ‘Elections Authority’. That writes Minister of the Interior Kajsa Ollongren in a letter to the House of Representatives. It describes, among other things, … Read more
Minister Kajsa Ollongren of the Interior aims to submit a bill before the end of this year that will oblige municipalities to publish election results in open data format on their municipal websites. The minister writes in a letter to the House of Representatives that she has already pointed out to municipalities on several occasions … Read more
Many municipal websites still do not meet the requirements of the web content accessibility guidelines, which should make it easier for people with disabilities to use a site. That would emerge from research. It is a problem that municipalities have been dealing with for a long time. Eric Velleman, accessibility expert at the Accessibility Foundation, … Read more
An ethical hacker was commissioned by the municipal audit office to gain admin access to the digital infrastructure of the municipality of Arnhem through an inside-out attack. This allowed him to view privacy-sensitive information of citizens and officials. The ethical hacker connected to the network from within the town hall in order to acquire the … Read more