The server is now live and in use at social.overheid.nl
The official announcement post by the State Secretary of Digitalisation: https://social.overheid.nl/@avhuffelen/110700825255524685
In the post she mentions that the government supports ‘value-driven’ alternatives to social media. In a letter to the house of representatives she describes Mastodon as a Digital Common Good, and that it fits in the larger strategy of the government of using ‘open source, unless’ (meaning theyll always use open source unless there is a clear explicit reason not to).
But the Dutch state instance isn’t meant to assert power over user content nor is it meant to influence any information shared. Normal people won’t be able to create an account on that instance, so they cannot see what people view or limit what people create.
The reason for the instance is to have a government owned instance to share things that aren’t limited by another 3rd party commercial company. Now the government is in control instead of meta or Twitter and they can’t decide to, for instance, limit view access for everyone with no accounts one day. (Looking at you Twitter)
Another additional advantage is that all the official dutch government accounts are now grouped on an instance with limited and screened account creation. So now everything from that instance is verified to be from the Dutch government. Possibly reducing fraud and impersonating accounts in the future once people get used to the federated usernames.