Policy Authority PKIoverheid (PA)

The governance body behind PKIoverheid: it sets the rules for the Dutch government's PKI hierarchy and admits certificate providers.

The Policy Authority PKIoverheid (PA) is the governance body behind PKIoverheid, the Dutch government's own PKI hierarchy. It is housed within Logius and advises the director of Logius, who represents the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in managing that hierarchy; the PA itself is not a separate ministry or agency.

Its work is policy and governance, not day-to-day certificate issuance. The PA develops and maintains the Programme of Requirements (PoR), the normative framework that every certificate service provider must meet; it manages the root and intermediate certificate authorities at the top of the hierarchy; and it assesses trust service providers that apply to join the hierarchy and monitors them once admitted, including following up on audit findings and incidents. Formal admission is decided by the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, on the PA's advice, not by the PA itself.

Note: the Policy Authority PKIoverheid is not the same body as the Rijksinspectie Digitale Infrastructuur (RDI). The RDI registers Dutch-established qualified trust service providers on the Netherlands trusted list under eIDAS; the PA governs the separate, Dutch-only PKIoverheid scheme, and many but not all PKIoverheid certificate types also carry eIDAS qualification - some are audited only against ETSI EN 319 411-1 instead. RDI and Logius run a formal cooperation protocol to coordinate their oversight of trust service providers admitted to PKIoverheid.