The public servant benefits in vacations, work hours, health support, plus an above average salary as highly educated technician.
Post and trains already had to be privatised since them being government owned was deemed anti competitive by EU standards
The company in question only provides cloud services, and has no access to any data.
> I just don't understand why the government won't consider funding it. It's a public infrastructure service at this point.
It has been 9 years since the last centrist ("purple") government in the Netherlands. 24 years since the last left-wing led government. Nothing more to it.
It's just decades of Neoliberal "outsource government tasks to the free market" policy. There really isn't any other reason; The Dutch government has multiple divisions which are quite good at IT. It could choose to do so at any moment, it just doesn't.
Voters just didn't care. The system worked fairly reliably. So they just kept voting for a very charismatic politician, regardless of the long term consequences.
Because they're a government and they are therefore going to fuck it up.
Not big on evidence-based thinking, are you?