EU institutions are active on Mastodon and Peertube servers, thanks to a pilot project run by the European Data Protection Supervisor. But they’ll be shut down in May – because nobody wants to be responsible for them.
It’s not a cost issue. It’s about taking responsibility for maintaining a reliable, highly-available service.
I’m pretty sure a solution will be found eventually. EU institutions need IT infrastructure to work and communicate like everybody else and all EU countries have highly available infrastructure like emergency services, secure channels etc. It’s just a matter of putting this task in the right context.
It’s a very good thing that they’ve stumbled across this snag because solving it can also open the way for running more internet public services in the EU in an open, transparent manner, and may open the way to weaning ourselves off commercial platforms.
Having a distributed, federated, secure, privacy-friendly and open EU-run messaging platform for example would be a huge boon for its citizens and have wide implications for other regions as well.
It’s not a cost issue. It’s about taking responsibility for maintaining a reliable, highly-available service.
I’m pretty sure a solution will be found eventually. EU institutions need IT infrastructure to work and communicate like everybody else and all EU countries have highly available infrastructure like emergency services, secure channels etc. It’s just a matter of putting this task in the right context.
It’s a very good thing that they’ve stumbled across this snag because solving it can also open the way for running more internet public services in the EU in an open, transparent manner, and may open the way to weaning ourselves off commercial platforms.
Having a distributed, federated, secure, privacy-friendly and open EU-run messaging platform for example would be a huge boon for its citizens and have wide implications for other regions as well.