Open letter to the Executive University Board: Calling for a transformation to digital autonomy

You can sign the open letter here.

We, the undersigned, express our concern about our university’s reliance on services from Big Tech companies (particularly Microsoft, Google, Amazon) for our research, teaching and administrative activities. (1) The University of Amsterdam’s commitment to offer alternatives needs to be prioritized again. Several years ago, the Rectors of the Dutch universities collectively and wisely warned about this. (2) Meanwhile almost all Dutch universities migrated to Big Tech cloud services, at the expense of our internally operated computer centers.

The University of Amsterdam is currently largely dependent on Microsoft Office 365 for all our office work: emailing, writing documents, creating presentations, making video calls, sharing documents and storing our data. Other significant dependencies exist for several key systems at our university. This creates multiple vulnerabilities, especially in the light of a rapidly changing geopolitical situation. (3)

First of all, there are significant security and privacy risks. Access to adopted services rely on authentication services that depend on transatlantic connections, that may be cut at the whims of the American government. In such a situation, all research and teaching would come to an immediate halt. We are also losing control over our data. Microsoft, Google, Zoom and other companies whose services we rely on can be required by law to share our communications, documents, and sensitive (personal) data with US agencies. The fact that the data is stored on European servers offers no (legal) protection (4) and any protections that would be offered can be circumvented by US authorities without transparency.

Apart from these immediate security and privacy concerns, our alternative-less reliance on Big Tech is fundamentally at odds with public values like freedom, independence, autonomy and equality— as pointed out already in 2019 by the Rectors. The digital services we use for our research and teaching are profoundly shaping our professional practices; the incorporation of the newest AI-tools (e.g. co-Pilot) in basic software (e.g. MS Office 365), substantially shape our teaching and research and hence impact our professional autonomy.

Replacement of academic ICT infrastructure with software services from large companies has also changed what universities can offer to their community as well as to society in general. This is because universities increasingly favor corporate ICT and management environments in-house or open source solutions developed for universities. In the process, they loose key capacity and flexibility to manage services beyond what is offered by the dominant companies. This inadvertently creates a preferential environment for the bigger players.

The matters combined transform universities from being a source of technical innovation and knowledge distribution to consumers of services. Or worse, by moving more research practices and associated innovation into the clouds, these companies end up determining the conditions for research, nudging research agendas and outcomes towards implementations in their environments. This means publicly funded research can at times come to entrench the dominance of these few companies into the future.

With this open letter we call upon you to pursue a course towards strategic independence and offering alternatives, thereby reducing this heavy reliance on services from a handful of very large, non-European companies and contributing to greater technological self-determination, resilience and public innovation for and with universities across Europe.

We understand that these developments happened slowly over the years and our university cannot switch to its own IT-infrastructure or rebuild its ICT departments immediately. We therefore ask you to define a point on the horizon and collaboratively define a strategy. We ask you to make our university’s explicit policy goal to significantly reduce our universities’ dependency on Big Tech services in three years time. Universities, in collaboration with each other and SURF, need to work towards technical infrastructures and practices that restore our role in charting democratic and equitable digital futures.

Alternatives to Big Tech offerings — based on non-profit motives, open-source, public values and transparency — do exist and are essential for universities to transform digitally. Importantly, the less we use these alternatives, the more our reliance on Big Tech becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Below we list several things which can be done immediately.

• Locally: reverse the ongoing transition to Big Tech and invest in local expertise and deployment, for instance by running our own mail server, and by expanding on the Nextcloud initiative (5), that you already support in the pilot for AlgoSoc.
• Nationally: use your influence within SURF to make the point on the horizon a national goal for the (higher) education sector. Work with your colleagues in the Netherlands to turn universities into an engine of innovation for transformative and equitable digital futures.
• Internationally: work actively with other European universities for an autonomous academic IT-infrastructure that could be a source of innovation and resilience globally.

We have already started a dialogue with our UvA University Board to start moving towards digital resilience and self-determination in academic institutions across Europe and beyond. If you support this strategy, please sign this local petition to show your concerns and bring them to the attention of our university, preferably before April 16, 2025. We hope our initiative will be picked up by colleagues at other universities in The Netherlands to show the broad academic base of our concerns.

Sincerely,

Prof. dr. Natali Helberger (Professor of AI and Law, Co-director AlgoSoc)

Prof. dr. Claes de Vreese (Professor of AI & Society, Co-director AlgoSoc)

Signatories (14 April, 10:00 CET) - 54

1. Agustin Ferrari Braun / Faculty of Humanities
2. Max van Drunen / Institute for Information Law
3. Fabio Votta / ASCoR
4. Tom Dobber / Assistant Professor Political Communication & Journalism
5. A. Marthe Möller / Assistant Professor of Entertainment Communication
6. Thomas Poell / Professor of Media Studies
7. Els De Busser / Associate Professor Information Law
8. Nathalie van Doorn / Program manager AlgoSoc
9. Bert Bakker / Associate Professor, Department of Communication Science
10. Penny Sheets Thibaut / Senior Lecturer
11. Corinna Oschatz / Amsterdam School of Communication Research
12. Felicia Loecherbach / Assistant Professor Political Communication & Journalism
13. Ulrike Klinger / Department of Communication Science
14. Geert-Jan Meewisse / Not affiliated
15. Joris van Hoboken / Professor of Information Law
16. Charis Papaevangelou / Institute for Information Law
17. Aqsa Farooq / postdoctoral researcher
18. Justin Chun-ting Ho / Amsterdam School of Communication Research
19. Teresa Weikmann / Postdoctoral Researcher
20. Wouter Tebbens
21. Marcel van Egmond / Senior Lecturer Communication Science
22. Tom van der Meer / Professor of Political Science
23. Rutger Helmers / Assistant professor
24. Marina Tulin / Assistant Professor Communication Science
25. Mathijs Booden / Docent
26. Menno den Engelse
27. Max Roeleveld
28. Tessel Renzenbrink / UvA ulumna
29. Jelle Boumans / Lecturer
30. Sindy Sumter / Associate professor
31. Boudewijn Koopmans employee at IXA / Faculty of Humanities
32. Noon Abdulqadir / PhD
33. Halil Can Kurban / Postdoc at European Studies
34. Tom Schoonen / Assistant Professor Philosophy of AI
35. Floor Fiers / Assistant Professor in Communication, Organisations and Society
36. Regula Hänggli / Alumni Assistant Professor
37. Heleen Janssen / Assistant professor
38. Davide Beraldo / Media Studies ILLC
39. Lisanne Buik / Visiting lecturer AI ethics
40. Thomas Smits / UD
41. Klaas Hernamdt / Programme lead Humanities Venture Lab
42. Katjana Gattermann / Associate Professor at ASCoR
43. Amir Vudka / Assistant professor Media Studies
44. Raoul Koudijs / PhD Student
45. Marisa Ponti / None
46. Mariana Lanari / PhD AHM
47. Charles Jeurgens / Professor of Archival Studies
48. Khalil Sima'an / Professor, Faculty of Science
49. Kim Baraka None / VU
50. Sanneke Stigter / Faculty of Humanities
51. Marjolein Lanzing / Assistant Professor Philosophy of Technology
52. Kimon Kieslich / Postdoctoral Researcher at IViR
53. Andrel Linnenbank / Alumnus, student and vaksteunpuntcoordinator bij betapartners
54. Ilse van der Linden / PhD candidate

Notes

1. This is a national version of a petition that was initiated by Jaap-Henk Hoekman, Bart Jacobs and Tamar Sharon from Radboud University Nijmegen (RUN) who launched an Open Letter/Petition that was quickly signed by more than 500 employees.
2. Rectores magnifici van de Nederlandse universiteiten: “Digitalisering bedreigt onze universiteit. Het is tijd om een grens te trekken”, de Volkskrant, December 22, 2019. https://www.volkskrant.nl/colu...
3. A. Meijer & J. van Dijck, “Universiteit, maak je los van Big Tech”, Trouw, February 23, 2025. https://www.trouw.nl/opinie/op... 
4. Because of the U.S. CLOUD Act. See e.g. https://iapp.org/news/a/questi... 
5. Pilot with NextCloud, supported by SURF. See: https://communities.surf.nl/pu...