Gem is Haven-compliant
Gem in the news more than once
Gem was in the news last week. iBestuur reported that ‘municipal chatbots are gambling with residents’ trust’. That called for a response from Gem: ‘Sitting out the chatbot era puts municipalities at a disadvantage’ (both in Dutch).
Gem is Haven-compliant
Over the past few weeks the Gem team has been working on making Gem Haven-compliant. This is a precondition for moving the hosting of Gem to ICTU, which is what we intend to do.
The Haven standard describes how municipal software can run securely and in a standardised way in the cloud. The standard was developed by municipalities as part of the Common Ground vision and makes collaboration, scalability and moving applications between environments easier. See also: VNG, Commonground and Wigo4it (in Dutch).
The handicap of a head start
At first glance it may seem odd that Gem did not yet meet this comply-or-explain municipal standard. But it makes sense once you consider that Gem has been around for more than 6 years, while the Haven standard has been in use by municipalities for 4 years now.
The good news is that we have now succeeded in making the software ‘Haven-compliant’. That software consists of separate components which give each other instructions, but which must not have more permissions in the cloud than they need. This improvement reduces security risks. The software is also being adapted to fix security vulnerabilities. From now on, that will happen on a regular basis.
It means that Gem can now be hosted at ICTU. The plan is to have this in place before 9 July. First, on 16 April, the Gem administration will be transferred to the VNG. That moment doubles as the kick-off for setting up the service at ICTU.