Mr. Menno Van Drunen attended this ceremony on behalf of the Procurement Service Centre North.  He stated: "Think big, start small and make a step ahead every day. We want to create more social sustainable supply chains and we encourage and inspire other organizations to join us in this effort for responsible procurement and delivery of ICT. Now is the time to act."

"Once you have visited a factory in East Asia, you'll understand the influence procurement can have in creating a sustainable supply chain", Mr. Bergsma, a category manager at DUO/SSO-Noord added. "Electronics Watch offers an approach for us to improve the working conditions in the ICT production facilities."

Electronics Watch welcomes this Ministry of Education department, the fifth Dutch affiliate.  Leading up to the affiliation Mr. Albert Geuchies, contract manager, organised several meetings with Electronics Watch and datacentre hardware contractors to discuss contractual obligations. The contractors, concerned at first, learned about the possibilities to strengthen social responsibility in their supply chains through the Electronics Watch system, reports Eelco Fortuijn, Electronics Watch Representative in the Netherlands. "Some of them are now enthusiastic about this initiative of the Dutch government and are working proactively to strengthen company policy," said Mr. Fortuijn.

Procurement Service Centre North is part of the Shared Service Organization North of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and one of the 20 national Procurement Service Centres within the Dutch government. Datacentre Category Management is part of this centre and offers procurement services for datacentre hardware to over 56 IT organizations within the national government. More information: https://www.iuc-noord.nl/rijkscategorieen/datacenters