Great news! The Dutch government committed to use Open Standards. With equal suitability Free Software (as in FLOSS) is to be preferred above Non-Free Software.

From Dutch Government and Parliament: Open standards in 2008 :

It took a few years, but the Dutch government and parliament agreed yesterday to implement open standards in 2008 according to the “comply or explain” principle. This means that all central government institutions should use open standards from April 2008 onward, unless they have a very good explanation. The new policy isn’t just about open standards. When implementing ICT projects open source software should be taken into account as well and should be chosen when at least equal to that of proprietary software.

Read more :

• Dutch Government and Parliament: Open standards in 2008
• Our governement has seen the light: Open Standards and Open Source!
• Netherlands adopts open-source software
• Thread on ubuntuforums

I also blogged about this in Dutch :

• Overheid moet aan Open Standaarden en Vrije Software