On privacy-safe web analytics, compliance, and the choices organisations make (or should make).
Matomo has solved the privacy question for many public organisations. The question that has replaced it: what do you do when Matomo's limits — scalability, data model, operational burden — start to show?
How do you explain to the board that the digital service metrics you've been reporting for three years come from a tool you're no longer really allowed to use? The question is no longer whether to leave GA4; it's how to do so responsibly without discarding your entire measurement strategy.
Govanalytics is a web analytics platform built on the open-source core of d8a.tech and designed to meet the five characteristics we define as [gov] for digital measurement data. It is available as a managed cloud service with Dutch hosting, or self-hosted in your own environment. The core is open-source and therefore fully publicly available.
European public organisations are no longer asking whether they need to leave US-hosted analytics. They're asking how, and what comes next — and they're asking under time pressure. After ten years of variations on this conversation, this is what I believe to be true.