Lodewijk Loos, door Jimena Gauna. — Waag

Waag’s Head of ICT on making choices for your organisation

For over 30 years, Waag has been working on open, fair and inclusive technology. Our research, our projects and our events: everything is centred around this mission. This also influences the choices you make internally as an organisation. How do you put that mission into practice? Following the publication of Waag’s ICT Annual Report 2025, we asked Lodewijk Loos, Head of ICT at Waag Futurelab, what ICT policy at Waag looks like and what challenges he faces within the organisation.

Waag follows an ICT policy based on three guiding principles. We want to be able to speak from our own experience about the design, development and management of technology. Furthermore, when selecting and developing systems and applications, we follow the principles of the Public Stack and work with open source wherever possible. Finally, we collaborate with others as much as possible to share knowledge and work more efficiently, which is why we also share our software and methodologies.

Why do you think it’s important for us, as an organisation, to be accountable in this regard?

‘Waag uses different technology than most other organisations. We’re very committed to the open technology we use, and we’d like to encourage others to do the same. And the story we often tell is sometimes a bit abstract: about why it’s so important to use open technology, what the prerequisites should be and what the policy ought to be. We often get calls from other organisations saying, ‘Why yes, we agree, but how do you actually go about it?’ That’s why we’ve put it in writing. It’s very specific. Among other things, we share the names of the tools we use and give examples of the challenges you might face if you want to do things differently from other organisations. For example, colleagues sometimes have to start using tools that involve a learning curve.’

Was there anything that really stood out for Waag in the field of ICT in 2025?

'A major theme for us last year was, of course, AI. It’s now a technology that everyone uses, but it too is dominated by the big tech companies, who try to get you hooked on it so that you will pay for their subscriptions.

AI is now integrated into tools that many organisations already use, such as Microsoft Teams and other big tech office environments. We’re looking specifically at how we can use AI in a way that aligns with our values. This is something we’ve given a lot of thought to over the past year, but haven’t quite found a solution for yet. We have, however, drawn up internal guidelines for the use of generative AI, as colleagues were requesting advice on this.

I’ve noticed that the partners we work with are using AI more and more. We’re also increasingly being asked to use AI, because people think it makes you work faster. We then engage in a discussion about it. At our organisation, colleagues are a little less inclined to simply jump on the bandwagon and start using a technology without thinking. The people who work for us have a strong ethical compass and know what the organisation stands for.’

You mentioned earlier that, as Waag, we run into issues with our open technology when collaborating with other organisations. What do you mean by that?

‘We often work in partnerships with organisations across Europe. Usually, one of those organisations is responsible for setting up a collaborative environment where everyone – that is, all the organisations involved – can store their documents. If we’re the ones responsible, we opt for NextCloud, for example.

This often means that partners – who are used to using Microsoft 365, for example – run into problems. ‘I don’t understand how it works. All the buttons are in a different place.’ And that document editor – which, in our case, is OnlyOffice – is different from Word. They find that annoying too.

For video calls, we use Big Blue Button instead of Teams or Google Meet. With partners, you soon find that they don’t know how to share their screen. It’s not that alternatives always work less well, but they work differently. Due to habit and convenience, people and organisations don’t always give the alternatives a fair chance. You do sometimes encounter resistance. ‘In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, people don’t want to take the time to get to know an open alternative.’

What’s on your wish list for 2026?

‘I’d really like to see more colleagues using the Linux operating system. At the moment, we all have MacBooks. And if you have a MacBook, you’ve almost no choice but to install macOS on it. Apple has been a trendy, cool company for a long time, but these days they’re just another big tech company that wants to make as much profit as possible.

That’s why I want us to be able to use the open-source operating system Linux – not just the technically minded, but also those who do more office-based work. Word processing, working with spreadsheets, creating presentations – you can do all that on Linux too. It takes time, but ultimately we’ll all benefit if we opt for open tech.’