The Dutch government will spend around 1 billion euros more on IT projects than originally planned, Financieele Dagblad concludes after analyzing 125 recent ICT initiatives by the national government.
The original budget for the analyzed projects was approximately 2.5 billion euros. The expected costs have now risen to 3.5 billion euros, according to the newspaper. On average, the projects are 36 percent over budget. For 22 projects, costs doubled.
The government does not have to withdraw its new law on the Dutch intelligence and security services in its current form, the court ruled on Tuesday in summary proceedings filed by a group of privacy organizations and companies, NU.nl reports.
Both the Dutch egg sector and the government did not give food safety high enough priority when it came to the fipronil contaminated egg scandal of last year, a committee headed by former Minister Winnie Sorgdrager concluded after investigating the crisis. The previous government also did not properly inform parliament about what was going on, the committee found, ANP reports.
The government is planning to close four prisons in the Netherlands, sources told newspaper AD. The prisons need to close because there are too many empty cells in the country, but this will also cause job losses for prison staff.
The prisons in Zoetermeer, Zeist, Almere and Zwaag are on the list to be closed, according to the newspaper. By choosing those prisons, the government hopes to save prisons outside the Randstad, where prison workers will have a harder time finding new work.
The Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, wants the government to explain a controversial deal that Shell made with the Dutch tax authorities in 2005. As a result of this deal, Shell's British shareholders are exempt from dividend tax in the Netherlands, through which the Dutch treasury lost out on over 7 billion euros, newspaper Trouw reported on Saturday.
The government plans to put an end to the Netherlands' contribution to the the UN military mission in Mali, sources told RTL Nieuws. There are currently 250 Dutch soldiers in the African country.
This year and next year secondary vocational schools (VMBO) will receive more money for pupils with a technical profile, Minister Arie Slob for Primary and Secondary Education wrote in a letter to parliament. In this way the government wants to stimulate technical education, he said, NOS reports.
All Dutch primary- and secondary schools are obliged to give good "citizenship" lessons focused on the "basic values of the democratic constitutional state" in a new legislative proposal by Minister Arie Slob for Primary and Secondary Education, NOS reports.
People in the Netherlands often do not get the care they need and are entitled to, National Ombudsman Reinier van Zutphen said in a report about the new healthcare system introduced in the Netherlands in 2015, NOS reports.
The new system gave municipalities more responsibilities when it came to healthcare. The idea behind that was that municipalities know their residents better than the national government, and therefore would also know better what care their residents need.The intent was to make healthcare more accessible and more customizable.
The Dutch government will not take any concrete measures to help Air France-KLM cope with the unrest on the French side of the airline, Minister Wopke Hoekstra of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Hugo de Jonge both said, in different words, on Wednesday, NU.nl reports.
The situation in Afghanistan is still very dangerous, and people sent back to the country run the risk of being kidnapped, tortured and killed, according to 10 aid organizations. They call on the Dutch government to stop deporting asylum seekers back to the country, RTL Nieuws reports.
The Dutch government and authority on financial markets AFM must come up with guidelines for ICOs if they want to keep developments in this technology in the Netherlands, Jan Robert Schutte, Amsterdam-based CEO of CryptoAcademy and ICO adviser, said at the Black Sea Blockchain Summit in Tbilisi, Georgia on Wednesday.
"As long as the AFM doesn't say anything - instead of providing guidelines for ICOs - the ICO projects will leave the Netherlands because of the lack of clarity." Schutte said.
For the first time ever, a member of the Dutch government attended the commemoration fo the Armenian genocide of 1915 and 1916 in Yerevan.
State Secretary Menno Snel of Finance was at the ceremony in the Armenian capital, at the insistence of the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament. In the presence of the other foreign guests, he lay flowers at the monument for the victims, NOS reports.
Children's Ombudsman Margrite Kalverboer is calling on the government to bring Dutch kids stuck in camps in Syria back to the Netherlands. "Doing nothing is unacceptable and in violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child", she said on Thursday. "The Netherlands must to everything in its power to bring these children back." ANP reports.
A coalition of journalists, lawyers, civil society organizations, and IT- and tech companies is preparing a lawsuit to postpone the implementation of the new law for the Dutch intelligence and security services, NU.nl reports.
State Secretary Menno Snel of Finance will attend the commemoration of the Armenian genocide in Armenia next week. This is the first time a member of the Dutch government will be present at the commemoration. From now on a Dutch Minister or State Secretary will attend the commemoration every five years, RTL Nieuws reports.
Shell and Exxon wants the government to pay them billions of euros in compensation for the gas that will not be extracted from Groningen now that the government is gradually reducing gas production in the province to zero, NOS reports.
Netherlands members of parliament will permit an investigation to determine whether a pattern of sexual harassment and sexual intimidation occurs in the Dutch government. After the summer, employees will be asked whether they have had to endure unwanted intimacies, according to a policy approved by the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament.
The municipality of The Hague is calling on the Dutch government to keep funding a program that helps prostitutes get out of sex work and build up a new living. Alderman Karsten Klein will send a letter with this call to the government this week, and hopes to also get support from his colleagues in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, NOS reports.
Turkish Minister Fatma Betul Kaya is dropping a lawsuit filed against the Netherlands, the Telgraaf reports based on information from a "highly placed" Turkish source. In the lawsuit she accused the Netherlands of illegally naming her an unwelcome foreigner and deporting her from the Netherlands in March.
There were indications that the Turkish Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya's security guards were carrying weapons during disturbances at the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam last month, the Dutch government wrote to parliament on Monday. The police therefore considered the guards "armed and dangerous". No weapons were found after they were arrested, AD reports.
Dutch petroleum company NAM has withdrawn from handling claims related to earthquake damage or any other problems caused by gas extraction in Groningen, RTV Noord reports based on sources within NAM. This follows a report the Dutch Safety Board published on Thursday which states that the Dutch government should be responsible for handling Groningen fracking damage claims, not NAM, NU.nl reports.
The Dutch government and Dutch companies are very poorly protected against cyber attacks and crime, according to a report by the Rathenau Institute. Current measures against cyber threats are insufficient and strengthening cyber security in the Netherlands should be a higher priority, the report says according to ANP.
The report, titled A never run race was done at the request of the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security and intelligence service AIVD.
The Dutch government made approximately 450 million euros by selling 20.4 million shares in former Fortis insurer ASR. The shares were sold for 22.15 euros each, NLFI announced on Friday, ANP reports.
The NLFI is the foundation that manages the Dutch government's shares in financial institutions.
With the sale of 20.4 million shares on Thursday, the government's share of ASR reduced from 63.7 percent to 50.1 percent. the government plans to further reduce its share in ASR, but has to wait at least 90 days before another transaction can happen.
