“Employees are concerned about where their data are stored. How should they deal with this uncertainty?” asked Donna Yates, an academic staff representative on the University Council. “It’s complicated”, replied Marita Keurentjes, director of the UM Corporate Information Office. “We’re dependent on Microsoft, but we are reconsidering this. At the same time, we can’t just stop using it overnight.” Virtually everyone at the university uses Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams. According to Keurentjes, a “dilemma session” with digitalisation experts will be held soon. “With every new project, we’ll need to reassess our options.” If UM wants to reduce its dependence on American systems, this will likely come at the cost of factors such as user-friendliness.
Since Trump came back to power, Big Tech and the US government have become closely intertwined. Are our data being monitored from across the Atlantic? Will the US start blocking European data? These questions are troubling both university administrators and researchers. “We certainly have a desire to explore alternatives”, said Jan-Tjitte Meindersma, Vice-President of the Executive Board. So why has the university only increased its reliance on Microsoft in recent years? Academic staff representative Jeroen Moes raised this question, pointing out that Teams among others has become the default software for video conferencing and calls. Keurentjes replied, “With every new project, we ask, ‘Do we want to use something different? And if so, what’s the alternative?” She pointed out the university’s relatively small size: “We can’t solve this on our own. We need to put our heads together with other institutions and SURF [the IT cooperative of Dutch education and research institutions].”
Meindersma explained that a UM delegation will soon visit Nextcloud, a European open-source collaboration platform for file storage and sharing. Five Dutch universities – the University of Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Utrecht University and Tilburg University – have recently started a joint pilot project with the platform. Last week, the Dutch current affairs TV programme Nieuwsuur described Nextcloud as “the European alternative to Microsoft”, though less comprehensive and advanced. Natali Helberger, a professor of law and digital technology at the University of Amsterdam, spoke on the programme about the erosion of academic freedom under Trump, noting that the US has restricted research on diversity, among other things. We’ll have to sacrifice some user-friendliness for privacy and academic freedom, she concluded. “It’s the price we have to pay.”