Continuing the rush towards the end of the year.
This week I

• Had a meeting about aiding the Dutch government’s federated data system team with exploring the impact of EU data legislation on their architecture choices.
• Had a preparatory meeting for a session on AI/ethics in the context of auditing work within government entities, that takes place early December.
• Caught up with an open data lawyer I’ve know for a long time but hadn’t spoken to in a while. He contacted me to verify some details around a FOIA request his client received.
• Had a session of the interprovincial digital ethics committee, always a good way to spend a morning in fascinating conversation.
• Discussed a national system for mobility data.
• Joined a meeting of the national geo-information program team to give a presentation about the EU data legislation and data spaces and discuss the impact on their work.
• Had the weekly client meetings
• Voted in the parliamentary elections. It seems many thought it a good idea to make a self-confessed arsonist the fire chief: Wilders’ program is mostly unconstitutional, as he admits as well, yet here we are. His party literally is anti-democratic, as he himself is the only member of it. Whatever the outcome of the attempts to form a government, this means that any serious work w.r.t. climate adaptation, European security, international aid, and housing will be stopped for some time in favour of blaming immigrants for everything you feel insecure about. Simplistic witch hunts rather than dealing with complexity is the preferred option for about 1 in 3 it seems. I’ve seen the Overton window in the Netherlands shift continuously to the right in the past decades. My votes over time nominally fell increasingly to the left even if my own viewpoints and key concerns haven’t shifted much.
• Volunteered to count the votes at the polling station nearest to our home. It was fun to do, and experience the process. Well designed process I must say, with multiple eyes on everything and many little feedback loops as design principles. The biggest effort was unfolding the very large ballots of the just under 1000 votes we had to count. After that is was split into party lists and then counted and recounted. The total was then compared to the number of voters that came in, and it matched (otherwise an immediate recount would have been needed).
• Rewrote the multiyear plan and budget claim for the interprovincial digital ethics committee, to be discussed with the decision makers next week.
• Spent a long but good day at the annual conference of the intergovernmental data strategy program. Took part in a lively panel discussion about the coming European data spaces.
• Made some progress in repairing the power network outside, after the summer meltdown. Now that it is dark from late afternoon having a light in and near the shed is useful. I did a provisional fix, but will replace the light fixtures too. Those will arrive sometime coming week.