Online Trust Coalition

More than twenty organisations from government, industry and science have united in the Online Trust Coalition. This coalition is an initiative of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate and the public-private partnership project Partnering Trust. The Online Trust Coalition notices that cloud and online services (hereafter: cloud services) are part of almost all digital innovations. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are now booming precisely because of the availability in the cloud of storage, computing power and smart algorithms. Cloud services are essential to solve current challenges in society. Cloud services are therefore crucial in the ambitions set out in the Dutch Digitalisation Strategy. The Online Trust Coalition notices that it is quite difficult for the customer and other parties concerned (think of consumers, citizens, financiers, shareholders, auditors and supervisors) to obtain certainty about the reliability of cloud services based on the accountability information given by providers. Cloud service providers face the challenge that stakeholders often request different kind of evidence to demonstrate that all legal and reliability requirements are met. Such lack of certainty is an obstacle for the use of cloud services and thereby hampers innovation. It also creates an uneven playing field: it is difficult for smaller European providers and innovative newcomers to demonstrate their reliability, which may sometimes be prejudicial to their competitiveness compared to large, established parties. Government, business and science work together in the Online Trust Coalition to change this.