Limited Lifetime Guarantee

_{Published: 22 April 2025}

Known Uses

Dutch governmental organizations typically outline API lifecycles and deprecation policies in official documentation and service agreements. However, it’s uncommon for them to announce specific lifetime guarantees for their APIs. Instead, the standard practice is to give advance notice before making major changes or retiring an API version. This allows developers and stakeholders enough time to adjust their applications.

While detailed lifetime guarantees are not always made public, the general recommendation — both within government bodies and the energy sector — is to provide at least 12 months’ notice before deprecating or significantly modifying APIs.

NIS2 (Network and Information Security Directive 2) is an EU-wide directive aimed at strengthening cybersecurity resilience for essential and important entities, including government organizations and critical sectors like energy, healthcare, and digital infrastructure. The Netherlands, like other EU member states, is implementing NIS2 through national legislation, affecting how public and semi-public bodies handle digital services and infrastructure — including APIs.

While NIS2 doesn’t directly regulate APIs, it significantly influences how APIs should be governed, secured, and maintained within Dutch governmental organizations, making API management an important part of NIS2 compliance strategy.