The Netherlands Court of Audit's Recurring Algorithm Audits — a Government Oversight Model for Public-Sector AI

The Netherlands Court of Audit (Algemene Rekenkamer), the country's independent supreme audit institution, published 'An Audit of Algorithms' on 18 May 2022, assessing nine algorithms used across different Dutch government bodies against a structured framework covering governance, model quality, data quality and IT-general controls.

Assess whether government algorithms meet basic requirements for governance, model quality, data quality and IT-general controls, and institutionalise algorithm auditing as a recurring element of the Court's oversight of central government.

The Court audited nine algorithms in its 2022 report; covered algorithms at the Ministries of Justice and Security and of Social Affairs and Employment in its 2022 results published in 2023; and audited three further risk-prediction algorithms across different government bodies in its 2024 accountability audit.

Only three of the nine algorithms met all the basic requirements tested; the other six showed gaps ranging from inadequate performance monitoring to bias risks, data-leak exposure and insufficient control over unauthorised access. The approach and findings have been referenced internationally, including in a 2025 newsletter update from the EUROSAI IT Working Group, and the Court's audit framework has been used by outside researchers to re-examine specific government risk-profiling systems.

This is a governance/oversight practice rather than a deployed citizen-facing AI tool. It is included as strong evidence of a replicable, sustained institutional mechanism for holding public-sector AI accountable, even though the 2022 findings were largely critical of the audited algorithms.