The Dutch government has officially launched their own Mastodon server. In an accompanying letter, the State Secretary explains how this relates to the government strategy of supporting digital common goods.
This seems like an excellent use of federated services. Now their citizens have a single source for government updates that they know is valid and the government can ensure that everything follows whatever data laws they pass.
At least in Norway it was recently a huge scandal when tweets went private, as several public organs communicate through Twitter and suddenly over night this wasn't available to people.
I think there are a lot more countries than the Netherlands currently looking into this.
The Nordic Council of Ministers set up a Think Tank for digital strategy stuff last year, and they published their recommendations two months ago. They specifically advised all the Nordic governments to go all in on ActivityPub.
It would be amazing if the reason it is taking so long is that they are working on a tailor made activitypub service specifically for public information announcements. One can dream.
Not just data access or privacy, but also data retention laws for public officials. While one can hope no nation is afflicted with a leader like Donald Trump, a government-run Mastodon server wouldn't have problems like this.
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