Dutch Counsel Environment & Infrastructure: Digital Infrastructure is the Future Growth Market

The Dutch Counsel for Environment & Infrastructure (Raad voor de Leefomgeving en Infrastructuur) published a report on 2 July concerning the future of the growth markets in The Netherlands. "The Dutch government should create new strategies with a focus on the digital business climate". Regarding the future of the Dutch business climate the counsel advises to implement more policies relating to the digital infrastructure and ICT services.

The Dutch national newspaper NRC Handelsblad writes: "the counsel stimulates the government to increase investment in research and innovation. Investments are necesarry to secure our digital infrastructures. Our digital infrastructures are in the hands of commercial parties, but just like the government invests in railway stations like the Schiphol railwaystation, public investments should be considered among the possibilities. The government should focus on cyber security and net neutrality."

HSD underlines the suggestions of the counsel. 'The National Cyberplan Investment Program', a report written by HSD in April of this year, calls for a national cyber plan with a public-private approach in a network structure that encourages and facilitates innovations in cyber security and the protection of critical infrastructures. HSD views this approach, which includes an important role for the Dutch government, as most effective. "The Dutch society and economy increasingly becomes dependent on ICT. We use the internet for our online shopping and for our financial transaction, but it is also used to connect smartphones and other digital devices with our heathing systems (smart living) for instance, so we can check and manage our systems through our mobile devices. In the near future we will have self-driving cars, drones will bring us the goods we have ordered online."

For more the full report by Counsel for Environment & Infrastructure browse here.

More info about the HSD report National Cyberplan Investment program, published in April of this year, can be found here.

Both reports are written in Dutch.