The five characteristics
[gov] is not a sector — it is a standard. An organisation is not [gov] because it belongs to a particular domain, but because of how it handles digital data. Govanalytics captures that in five characteristics because they are not supposed to shift.
No edge nodes elsewhere, no "EU-region" with footnotes.
Concretely: all incoming web analytics data is processed on infrastructure physically located in the Netherlands, under Dutch jurisdiction. No “data residency in the EU” that in practice runs through an American parent company, no edge nodes in Frankfurt catching the first hop. Dutch hosting is not a feature you can construct with SLA clauses — it is an architectural choice you make at the top, or not at all.
No consent banners. No fake consent. No tracking pixels.
Govanalytics measures without cookies and without fingerprinting techniques that identify individual visitors across sessions. This has three consequences. No consent banner is needed for the measurement — it is not a processing of personal data in the way cookie tracking is. The numbers are not skewed by half of visitors clicking “decline”. And there is nothing for the visitor to accept or decline — nothing happens in their browser that would require it.
No Schrems II risk. No hidden sub-processors in the chain.
No data (aggregated, pseudonymised, or otherwise) leaves the EU. There are no sub-processors in the United States or other non-adequate countries. The processing registers and procurement file are conclusive on this point — and again: this is an architectural choice, not a promise behind a contract annex.
DPIA, data processing agreement — ready to use, updated quarterly.
The documentation you need to deploy Govanalytics lawfully is not an option or a paid support package. It belongs to the platform and is updated every quarter. The DPIA is not something you still “have to do” before going live — it is already there, ready to be completed with organisation-specific details. The same applies to the data processing agreement, the ROPA fragment, and the Transfer Impact Assessment.
Your ownership is architectural, not contractual.
The data always belongs to the customer. More importantly: the customer can fully export at any time to their own warehouse, own format, own infrastructure — without needing our permission or us initiating a process. The technical hook to do so is built in. And because the platform runs on an open-source core, there is no scenario in which you become locked in: it is always possible to continue measurement on the open-source version of d8a.tech, on your own servers, without us.
That last characteristic 05 is the most fundamental. The other four are promises that can be made solid with good architecture. Characteristic 05 is the guarantee that if we ever fail to keep those promises, you are not locked in with us.
How to adopt Govanalytics: three ways
The platform is available in one of the following ways, all built on the same technical foundation. Which one fits depends on what an organisation wants to manage itself and what it wants to outsource.
Govanalytics Cloud is the managed SaaS variant. Dutch hosting, all five characteristics configured by default, documentation included. The subscription is tiered by the number of requests per month: you pay for what you measure, not for a fixed contract with unused capacity. Updates, security patches, and the quarterly-updated documentation are included in the subscription.
Govanalytics On-Premise is the same software, but in your own environment. For organisations that, for policy, sector, or operational reasons, do not want anything running at an external party (even in the Netherlands), this is the path. Delivered with the same documentation as the Cloud variant, plus an installation and management guide. You provide the hosting; we provide the platform, updates, and manage operations.
The open-source core via d8a.tech is the third way and fundamentally different from the first two. Govanalytics is built on d8a.tech, an open-source platform that is publicly available. Those with the time, capacity, and desire to build and manage themselves can do so — without speaking to us, without a licence. This is not a feature-light version of the platform; it is the core of what runs under Govanalytics. What you give up in this path is the operational support, the quarterly-updated documentation, and the assurance of a commercial party standing behind it.
Will there be a ‘free’ Cloud plan?
A question we get often: will there be a free variant of Govanalytics Cloud?
The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is that “free” in this market almost always means someone other than the customer is paying — usually the visitor — in the form of data monetised elsewhere, or a network of sub-processors supplementing margins. That runs counter to the five characteristics.
Running a Cloud service costs money: infrastructure in the Netherlands, keeping documentation current, security maintenance, support. We charge that money as a tiered usage subscription. You know what you pay, we know where our revenue comes from, and the visitor pays nothing.
Those without budget but with capacity can at any time choose the open-source route via d8a.tech. That is literally free — not “free with an asterisk”, but publicly available software you run yourself.
Who is Govanalytics for?
For organisations that must comply: Dutch government (GDPR, BIO, council resolutions on digital sovereignty), banks and insurers under DORA, healthcare institutions under NEN 7510, grid operators and utilities under NIS2, universities and SURF members.
And for organisations that want to comply without being legally required: NGOs, family offices, and any organisation that holds the principled view that digital measurement data should meet the same standard as the rest of their data processing — regardless of whether a regulator is watching.
Want to get acquainted? Want to know more?
We discuss in 30 minutes which variant fits — Cloud, On-Premise, or building yourself on the open-source core. No sales pitch, no obligations.
Book an online meeting →