YourData Network has co-signed the Sustainable Digitalisation Manifesto 2027-2030 and joins the network of the National Coalition for Sustainable Digitalisation (NCDD), a Dutch partnership of government, business, knowledge institutions and civil society organisations. The manifesto was presented on Monday 28 September at the National Conference on Sustainable Digitalisation in Hilversum and handed over to Michiel Boots, Director-General for Economy and Digitalisation at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. We were there.
Why this manifesto, why now
The coalition presented its first manifesto to the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs in October 2022. Four years on, the world looks different. AI has taken an enormous flight and is driving up demand for computing power, hardware, energy, water and space. Geopolitical tensions expose how dependent the Netherlands has become on digital infrastructure and raw materials from outside Europe. The Netherlands and Europe want to be at the helm of their own digitalisation.
That is why there is now a renewed manifesto, with seven lines of action and one goal: sustainable digitalisation is the norm by 2030. For a company built on longer lifespans, open standards and genuine control over data, joining is self-evident.
Digital sustainability and sovereignty have a lot of overlap
The manifesto connects two themes that until recently were treated separately. The first is the environmental impact of digitalisation. The second is digital sovereignty: the question of who is in control of your own digital environment. Hannah Boute, programme manager of the coalition, put it this way at the launch: “Sustainable digitalisation is essential for a liveable society and a major driver of digital sovereignty, and with that of our competitiveness and earning capacity.” The manifesto’s fourth line of action accordingly asks organisations to weigh sustainability, resilience and freedom of choice together in their digital decisions.
The two do not automatically coincide: an energy-efficient solution is not sovereign by default and a sovereign solution is not energy-efficient by default. Our offering sits exactly where the two overlap. That is why we signed.
Not a pilot but daily practice
With this manifesto the coalition wants to move from pilots to scale and it explicitly states that smaller organisations are needed to carry this transition forward. Both points touch us directly. What we bring is not a pilot, it runs at our customers today. We are one of those smaller organisations ourselves and we show that taking part is not reserved for large corporations. In practice:
Making devices last longer. For laptops and phones, most of the environmental impact sits in production, not in use. A laptop written off by the requirements of Windows 11 runs smoothly for years on Linux Mint. This is not a side activity for us, it is what we deliver every day.
Working with what already exists. Part of our range is refurbished equipment. Those devices have already been produced; we make sure they get a second working life.
Updates do not force you into a new device. Many devices are replaced because the software stops supporting them, not because the hardware is worn out. With us it works the other way round: the systems we supply keep receiving updates for as long as the hardware can handle them. Linux Mint supports each release for about five years and its requirements are so modest that the next release still runs on the same old laptop. The same goes for our smartphones; older models still receive updates. The user decides when replacement is due, not the supplier.
Open standards and European alternatives. Our workplace is built on open source. Customers know where their data is stored and under which jurisdiction it falls. Leaving is possible whenever they want.
Spreading computing power instead of stacking it. Our infrastructure runs on nodes spread across offices and homes, without separate cooling installations. That is a different route from building ever more large data centres.
What we commit to the network
Signatories commit to more than a signature: they share experience and data with the network and contribute concretely to measuring, procurement, design and collaboration. Our contribution is obvious: hands-on experience with extending hardware lifespans and with infrastructure on distributed nodes. Organisations that want to know what this means for their own digital chain are welcome to contact us.
Read the manifesto · Explore the sovereign digital workplace