The server is now live and in use at social.overheid.nl
The official announcement post by the State Secretary of Digitalisation: https://social.overheid.nl/@avhuffelen/110700825255524685
In the post she mentions that the government supports ‘value-driven’ alternatives to social media. In a letter to the house of representatives she describes Mastodon as a Digital Common Good, and that it fits in the larger strategy of the government of using ‘open source, unless’ (meaning theyll always use open source unless there is a clear explicit reason not to).
The big difference between Meta and the Dutch government, is that the dutch government’s aim is not to compete and “destroy” other instances like lemmy.world/etc. Their instance is sort of their official digital megaphone.